Posted 04 January 2009 - 10:13 PM
Hilly,
I don't check the National Organization of Theater Owners' figures. But they are the best to which I have access. You provide anecdotal evidence that bears no resemblance to the larger picture. Maybe NATO wants to make everyone believe that tickets are more expense than they are. Could be! But let's look at anecdotal evidence. Go to MovieTickets.com, for example.
In LA, adult tickets are often around $11 per head. In Miami, Adults are $9.50 at the AMC Cocowalk 16. In St. Louis at the West Olive AMC 16, tickets are $9.00 each. (Quantum only has a 9:15 PM show there).
Now using Fandago.com, I did search for Baton Rouge, LA. The film is showing one show a day there - 1PM @ Cinemark Perkins Row for $5.00 a ticket, but that is the earlybird show price (no other theaters listed on Fandango are showing the film in Baton Rouge from what I could see). But "The Day the Earth Stood Still"'s adult price is $8.50.
In Colorado Springs, Quantum is playing in two cinemas, one show a day (10 PM-ish). Prices for adults: $8.25 at both theaters (both Cinemark).
Now the average movie ticket price should take in all the prices: Child, Senior, Student..whatever.
So, let's look at Colorado Spirngs first:
8.25 adult
5.75 child
5.75 senior
Now I have NO CLUE what the real breakdown between adults, children and seniors might be. I would *think* that it skews heavily towards adults, but let's pretend that it doesn't. Let's pretend that equal numbers of children, adults and seniors buy tickets to Quantum. For that theater, the average ticket price is right now: $6.58
Let's look at Los Angeles:
I found the movie playing full shows in ONE theater in Beverly Hills and two shows in some place called Alhambra. Tickets in Alhambra are $11.00 for adults and $8.00 for kids and seniors. Average ticket price might be as low as $9.00 using my low-skewed model.
I welcome you to find other examples to show how prices are way off from the $7.08 average cited by boxofficemojo.com. But the fact that you know one theater where they are only selling tickets for $6.00 does not seem to have an impact (or even easily reproducible) on my random sample of ticket prices.
So you are welcome to *believe* that ticket prices are falling, and thus the hoards of fans are running to Quantum but not being accurately counted properly in the US. I'm happy to believe you if you can produce some kind of data.
I believe, based on evidence from boxofficemojo.com and my own personal experience that ticket prices have increased about $0.35 over the past two years since Casino's release. I could be very wrong. Happy to be convinced by any real data. I believe ultimately Quantum will record fewer North American admissions than Casino.
Now, to understand why Sony thought Quantum would do better business, you can look at two comparisons. The first is Hancock, released this summer. Opening weekend: $62.6 million. Weekend #2: $32 million. Weekend #3 $14 million. Weekend #4 $8.3 million. Weekend #5 $5 million. Weekend #6 3.3 million.
Quantum: $67.5 mil / $26.7 mil / $18.8 mil / $6.7 mil / 3.7 mil / $2 mil.
Now, this ONLY looks at weekends because we might expect summer B.O, to be higher during the week. What we see, though, is that on the weekends, with the exception of Thanksgiving, Hankcock beats Quantum every time despite opening lower. Hancock went on to make $228 million US.
Ah, but this is summertime! Apples and oranges, some will cry!
So let's go back a year to National Treasure Book of Secrets, opening on Dec. 21, 2007: Weekend grosses:
$65.4 mil (Christmas weekend). Pretty close to Quantum. Action film. Sequel. Then: $35 million / $20 million / $11 million / $7.5 million / 9.6 (King Day weekend / $4.9 million / $2.9 million. Total B.O. - $220 million.
As comparison, look at how much National Treasure (1) did: $173 million domestic. HUGE JUMP. No ceiling there. And Nicholas Cage has starred in bombs and big hits. So no major star power. Why the jump? And more importantly, why did Disney expect the jump despite general reviews saying the film was a disappointment compared to the original? Because the first film not only did good box office, but was a huge hit on DVD...just like Casino Royale, and DVD sales are now considered the best predictor of the box office potential for a sequel.
So, you may mock people you don't know at Sony, claiming they were fools for believing their market research that showed huge demand to see the movie, and laughably ignorant for looking at the huge DVD numbers for Casino in giving them hope for numbers beyond Casino's domestic gross. That is your right. You seem to think they were idiots to think that this would possibly translate into a standard box office arc for similar films. And maybe you are right. I don't know. They have models for their work that can account for all sorts of things EXCEPT for whether an audience will like a movie or not. You present no models for your comments except for your suppositions that Bond can only gross so much. That's fine. Maybe it is true. Maybe everyone who has ever seen Quantum loved it. They keep going back, but because of the ticket prices are dropping like gas prices (uh, yeah, right), we just can't see how the film is really packing them in by the reported numbers.
Or maybe your wrong. Maybe you just want to believe that QoS is a monster hit and I and others just don't understand, and no evidence will convince you otherwise.
I don't need to convince you. Hey, I love the film. I am glad it did great in Germany.
I am sorry it is a disappointment to Sony.
But I think the problem is with the way the film works with audiences, not with the stock market. Not with the drop in ticket prices. Not with exchange rates.
Keep dancing...
