I think I waited 40 years to see Frodo crawling up Mount Doom. The Lord of the Rings movies were the most anticipated by me and many other fans.
(with obvious disclaimer that all LOTR book fans don’t like the films, etc etc)
Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds was highly anticipated. People couldn’t wait to see Brad Pitt and his band of misfits wreak havoc on the nazis.
Many were disappointed it wasn’t a Brad Pitt action flick.
There was a bit of hype over the Cloverfield movie, which had what I must say was a pretty brilliant viral campaign. Websites with photos that occasionally change, a trailer that teased the monster’s scale that got everyone excited, a fake website and backstory for product. I even thought some weird alternate reality game with some kind of orb was part of the movie’s buildup (and so did a lot of other people apparently. turns out it was for some online video game)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 - highest worldwide opening weekend ever. Enough people were anticipating it to spend nearly half a billion dollars going to see it on hte first weekend.
By comparison The Phantom Menacehad an opening weekend of $64 million ($102 million in 2013 dollars) in the US. It made 53% of its total in non-us markets so we’ll be generous and say it maybe grossed $250 million in 2013 on it’s opening weekend, just over half of Harry Potter.
What better metric could be used to measure anticipation than the opening grosses?
I don’t think those two sites are measuring the same thing. If I’m reading right, wikipedia is using the total gross between the opening day and the first Sunday, while the other site is using the literal first weekend gross. Phantom Menace opened on a Wendsday and HP on a Thursday, so the difference is meaningful.
I don’t disagree with those numbers, incredible as they may be. I mean, it appears hard to think a movie could double TPM, what with all the lines and hype.
Is it due to more theaters, ticket prices going up that much, 3-D/Imax premiums?
Well, anticipation kinda suggests the gross is heavily front loaded. Especially for Phantom Menace, which was generally regarded as a disappointment, and so probably did less business after the initial rush.
Yea, its kinda hard to tell since Harry Potter opened up in foreign markets at more or less the same time as domestic ones, while Phantom Menace only opened in the States at first, and I can’t find the per-day gross divided up by market anywhere.
But to take a swing at it, Harry Potter made 40,000 dollars per theater over the first five days it was out in 2011 dollars. Phantom made 46,000 per theatre in 2011 dollars in the first five days of its run, using the numbers from Box Office Mojo for both films.
So Phantom Menace was pulling in slightly more on a per-theater basis. How much of that was due to difference in anticipation as opposed to differences in movie pricing between '99 and '11, differences between movie ticket costs in the US vs other countries etc. I have no idea.
Are you sure? I don’t see where it specifies that, and if its just showing info for domestic showings, its pretty hard to see why Harry Potter would show in almost twice as many theaters domestically as Phantom Menace.
I remember Phantom Menace coming out, and I remember stories of people wanting refunds on tickets for other movies when they just wanted to see the trailer. However, I wasn’t particularly on board with that one.
The Dark Knight is the one that stands out for me as having a huge amount of hype around it. That is subjective, not objective, though. Surely immense talk of an actor being a shoe-in for an Oscar before release counts for something?
I think this is probably the winner, from a level-of-hype and fan anticipation standpoint.