I thought about taking simfamily to see it a second time tomorrow - I checked 6 viewing times in the afternoon - IMAX, RPX and ‘regular’ 2d - every single one functionally sold out again…
In its second weekend, A:E is estimated to make $145.8M. This is just slightly below SW:TFA’s record second weekend, but actuals might change that. It had been projected to bring in $150+M. What a disappointment! 
A 59% drop which is bit less than I expected.
It’s now over $2B globally ($600M away from Avatar) and 9th all-time domestic (unadjusted).
It looks like the total domestic box office fell ~50% this weekend due to A:E’s drop and modest new films.
Next weekend is Pikachu time. I can’t believe this is actually a challenge to A:E.
So the Avatar record is within striking distance. Still a bunch of other high-interest movies are releasing in the next few weeks. Aladdin opens on May 24, Dark Phoenix on June 7 and Toy Story 4 on June 21. Avatar had the advantage of opening at Christmas, and I think the early part of the year has few big movies.
Is anyone really that interested in Dark Phoenix?
Probably more than Aladdin.
If my wife said “I want to see either Aladdin or Dark Phoenix,” and left the choice up to me, I’d choose Aladdin just out of curiosity. I have no interest in seeing a retelling of X-Men 3.
Well, I’m assuming that Aladdin is aimed at children and families, more so than Dark Phoenix. Do the kids still watch the animated Disney version?
See, if I got that choice, I’d be more likely to say “no, I think they got Aladdin right the first time,” because I’d be plenty more curious about whether they’ll manage to do something interesting with this telling of that X-Men story.
amazing how so much time is spent talking about how much money a movie makes. I guess some people use it as a way to judge the quality of a movie.
Certainly there’s no reason for most of us to care whether one movie from a giant corporation made more money than another movie from another giant corporation. We don’t work there and we don’t get a cut of the revenues. Years ago, I think The Daily Show would report the top-five box office results in Italian lira (as I said, it was a long time ago) just to point out how silly it was for the general audience to follow the numbers so avidly.
On the other hand, sometimes it does matter to me. If I really like a movie but it’s a smaller, perhaps independent one, I want it to do well at the box office so the director and/or screenwriter are able to make more like it.
It’s important because it’s an indicator of what sorts of projects studios will sink big production money into in the future.
If X-Men and Spider-Man hadn’t done as well as they did, we’d never have the Avengers.
But there will always be plenty of big budget comic book movies since that’s what sells now.
Why does anyone follow anything? Why do people follow sports? It isn’t going to affect your life in any way if your team fails to repeat last years championships. But people are interested.
I started reading box office mojo a while ago, and its just a matter of idle curiosity. If it doesn’t appeal to you, that’s fine but I don’t get why you need to sneer at it.
For this movie in particular, it’s just an amazing social phenomenon. Some people doubted whether it was physically possible for a movie to have the opening weekend it did, given the finite amount of theater seats in existence. But here we are.
Does it have enough in it to make it over Avatar? I am hopeful.
It’s only week 2, this is going to blow past Avatar.
The news today mentioned that Avatar reached the two-billion-dollar mark in 47 days (as compared to this flick getting there during — well, as you say, week 2).
Can it cross 3 billion?
Box Office Mojo today says the box office is just slightly under $2.2 billion and slightly more than Titanic. As for why I care, it’s mostly that I’m annoyed that the unadjusted record is held by Avatar, which was such a forgettable film. People remember other big movies (like Titanic), quote them and refer to them. But Avatar seems to have had no lasting impact.
It’s not a valid comparison, though - Avatar, like Titanic, had a relatively modest opening weekend followed by very low week-to-week drops. For whatever reason, James Cameron films have amazing “legs”. *Endgame *may very well pass Avatar, but it won’t make nearly as much money on its 7th weekend.
While I won’t say that’s impossible, it strikes me as pretty unlikely; culturally most people learn that popularity/financial success doesn’t indicate quality during junior high/middle school conversations about music. And pretty much every movie fan has movies they think were great that didn’t make a dime (Dark City), and movies they thought were dreck that made a fortune (Avatar).
People talk box office because it’s a good indicator of impending or continuing Hollywood trends, and for specific films it tells you if you’ll get a sequel, though you can’t guess if the sequel will be as good (The Matrix sequels).