Box Office Watch: $30.6M Domestic with a +25% Saturday bump – what does this, plus $70m foreign gross, mean for John Carter?

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John Carter is estimated at 30.6m for US Domestic Gross for the weekend, and 70M foreign.  We are adding updates as new information becomes available.  We’re putting the new updates at the top and pushing the older ones down, blog style.

Update 9PM PDT — Time now for the actuals, which will come in tomorrow afternoon

So the regular Sunday weekend reports are in, and they have John Carter at 30.6m with an estimated 8.5m for Sunday.  For those of us rooting for JC to how legs, the next big moment will be on Monday when the actuals come in.  If JC outperforms the Sunday estimate and is adjusted upward, that will be a good sign of a potentially strong hold, which is what the film clearly needs after a soft opening.

We shall see.

Update 6PM PDT — Hollywood Reporter: “John Carter Dominates Foreign Box Office”

The “second wave” of Box Office results reporting now has Hollywood Reporter changing its tone with an article entitled:

‘John Carter’ Dominates Overseas, Bagging $40 Million More Than Its Domestic Gross

Read the Hollywood Reporter Article

Update 4PM PDT — Forbes Box Office Report puts the weekend performance of John Carter in proper perspective

After taking $30.6 million in its domestic opening weekend, the new Disney sci-fi adventure movieJohn Carter brought home an additional $70.6 million overseas as easily the highest-grossing film overseas, for a worldwide opening weekend of more than $100 million. While most media reports are focusing on the pre-established narrative that the film is a flop and critical failure, audiences are rating the film with a very healthy B+, some key film reviewers have enthusiastically embraced the movie, and the strong foreign receipt numbers indicate it will have a much better total box office run than many of the detractors seem to be giddily hoping for.

Read the whole article

Update 2PM PDT — Screen Daily provides details of the foreign box office for John Carter

“The sci-fi spectacle opened in 51 territories on $70.6m led by a typically muscular Russian debut of $17.5m that made up for the film’s disappointing North American debut.

The worldwide tally stands at $101.2m thanks to this mighty international performance. The eternal challenge of recoupment looms large: the budget on John Carter reportedly reached $300m and it has already opened in all the top markets except China and Japan. Can China save the day?

Looking at the individual territories, South Korea returned $3.9m, France $3.8m, Australia $3.4m in first place, the UK $3.3m, Germany $3m, Mexico $2.9m, Spain $2.8m, Brazil $2.4m and Italy $1.6m. Remaining territories accounted for $26m.

There were several minor benchmarks, among them the fourth biggest Disney opening weekend in India and the tenth biggest launch for the studio in South Korea.”

Very strong 17,5 million debut in Russia.

Update 2PM — Breakdown of the International Numbers

UPDATE 11AM — The “Saturday Bump” in Perspective

John Carter  went from 9.8m on Friday to 12.3M on Saturday — a 25.4% % “Saturday bump” that surprised analysts and is causing the more serious observers to inject a note of caution into their analysis of John Carter.  Here’s why — following is a chart showing the Friday/Saturday performance of John Carter compared to the films that are most commonly used as comparables:

Here’s the same information in graphic form — where the significance is a bit easier to see the magnitude of the difference between John Carter’s Friday/Saturday performance and the Friday/Saturday performance of the comparables.

I also did some rummaging through Box Office Mojo looking for a film that opened at around 10m and had a Saturday bump in the 25% range.  ( I excluded kiddie animation because they follow a different pattern than live action films.) The only one I found was:

Blind Side $11,038,423 $13,742,443 24.50%

Is JC headed for a “Blind Side” result?  Most of the experts will say ‘no’.  But the Saturday bump clearly differentiates JC from the usual set of com parables.

The next thing to look for will be the actuals and whether they get revised upward.  JC has actually been climbing past the estimates steadily since Friday, when it was first reported that JC did 9.6 and Lorax 9.8 — only for that to be reversed when the numbers finally came in.  Then Saturday exceeded expectations with a 25% bump.  If the pattern holds true for Sunday, with the weekend total getting revised upward by $1m or more …..there will be reasons to say that the reports of John Carter’s box office demise are premature.  Stay tuned.

 

 

UPDATE 10AM — More info on Foreign

The LA Times is reporting the foreign figures thusly:

Overseas, the movie fared better, grossing $70.6 million from 55 foreign countries including Mexico, Brazil and South Korea. The picture performed best in Russia, where it was the No. 1 opening of the year and had the biggest opening day in the country’s history.

UPDATE 9:30AM PDT — 30.6M for the weekend?

Well, some relatively good news.  Box Office Mojo just posted the weekend estimate.

  • Friday 9.8M
  • Saturday 12.3M
  • Sunday 8.5
  • Weekend: 30.6M

The reason that’s good news is that it does indicate positive word of mouth.  And given all the doomsaying in the media, its unlikely that it will have to be revised downward when the actuals come out.

To try and discern what word of mouth is doing – it’s useful to look at some of the comparable releases.  “Prince of Persia” is the most commonly cited reference point and its first three days were 10.2, 10.3, 9.5 for a $30m opening. “Cowboys and Aliens” was 13.1, 13.2, 10.0.  So in both cases, JC’s “Saturday surge” from 9.8 to 12.3 is a positive sign, and the Sunday 8.5 is at this point just an estimate and could be revised upward.

Will be back shortly with another update and some more comparables to help put this in perspective.

It’s been a pretty tough weekend around here ever since it became apparent about mid-day on Friday that, with unexpected critical hostility creating even more headwinds for John Carter, the film appeared headed for a 26-30m opening weekend. When the full weekend figures come out today, it could be as low as $26m or as high as $30m.  But Box Office Mojo, the Bible in these matters, is already reporting $70m in foreign gross which is the first bit of encouraging news to be heard since the release on Friday.  The problem with that is, Box Office Mojo is not yet providing a breakdown of what countries that number is coming from.

Still — there is an outside possibility that John Carter could, even if its US numbers end up in the 100m – 120m range, eventually be labeled sequel-worthy if foreign box office reaches 350-400M.  That’s a tall order and the single actual datapoint we have thus far is 6.5m opening day in Russia– a record for that country.

So we wait.   I will add to this as more information becomes available.



 

 

 

17 comments

  • Just seen via the John Carter FB page, that it opened at #1 over the weekend here in the UK! No figures though! All good!

  • That LA Times article was terrible. Not mentioning the foreign take til the bottom of the article. When you look at the international market for most recent movies, JCM is crushing them by a huge margin. So why do they call it a flop. Are they in league with a rival studio?

    They mentioned audience reviews for Eddie Murphy and Silent House, but didnt mention audience reviews for JCM, which we all know are hovering near 75%.

    I hope they write another page describing how its slowly building into a very reasonable success, contrary to their misguiding headline. Lets give em the business Dotar!

  • I sure hope so. i love the fact that the film concluded on a good note despite the fact that they obviously left some things open if they do a sequel. I have a feeling the film will at least make 300 or 400 million once its run ends. Yes I know the fact that the Hunger Games will open in two weeks and it will bring huge numbers. But I’m sure word of mouth will spread quickly for the john carter film. Let me give you an example: when I saw the film the second time the theater I went to was packed. When the film ended as I walked into the lobby there was a line for the next showing!

  • I certainly encourage ERB fans who might have been too busy keeping track of where it departed from Princess to enjoy the movie the first time around to go back and see it again. Just got back from my second viewing. I sat back and thoroughly enjoyed the ride — even more than the first viewing.

  • “The knives were out and razor sharp long before this movie hit the screens. The eagerness some people seem to have in seeing it fail mystifies me. I can understand having no interest in a this sort of film, but gleefully rooting for it to bomb is ridiculous.”

    Agreed, Bob. I remember a similar mindset for GREEN LANTERN, and going back even further, DUNE back in ’84 (something Harlan Ellison discusses at length in the book HARLAN ELLISON’S WATCHING).

    It’s also frustrating to see that the international BO was just shrugged off by the haters of the film. But it’s comforting to know that it did well in the overseas market–and many films considered bombs or low earners here in the US actually make back their money and/or do very well overseas. Certainly AVATAR didn’t earn its 2 billion haul just with the US market.

  • I think Hunger Games is going to open so incredibly huge that JC will actually get a benefit in the form of overflow audiences who can’t get into HG. That happens sometimes when something opens mega-huge. I’m more worried that the following weekend it starts getting very crowded with Wrath of the titans coming out and pulling from the same audience. But I think it’s okay for the first three weekends in terms of competition. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. 😉

  • I fear it will get eaten by The Hunger Games and Wrath Of Titans. It has to most of his money in the next 2 weeks. For the greenlight, I feel that if the movie makes 350 million (which I think it will), it will have a sequel, I don’t remember where, but I think I’ve seen Stanton say that the movie needed 350 mil to have a sequel.

  • Yo Dotar!

    Love the info, man. I hope we know sooner than later about the greenlight on sequels.
    I will be obsessed until I know for sure, considering they have the script and everyone signed on for 2 more.

    BobJ is so right on the piling on. Ive read so much, and hope that the metrics you point out speak to the slow boil of JC becoming a hit. With nearly 18000 ratings on RT, and 13000 liking it, I would love to see it continue to April, where WOTT starts. Actually, April doesnt look too good in terms of blockbusters. Might see Cabin and Pirates….

  • Found this on IMDB, detail of international numbers:

    Screen Daily won’t let you link unless you subscribe. Copied this from another site.

    “The sci-fi spectacle opened in 51 territories on $70.6m led by a typically muscular Russian debut of $17.5m that made up for the film’s disappointing North American debut.

    The worldwide tally stands at $101.2m thanks to this mighty international performance. The eternal challenge of recoupment looms large: the budget on John Carter reportedly reached $300m and it has already opened in all the top markets except China and Japan. Can China save the day?

    Looking at the individual territories, South Korea returned $3.9m, France $3.8m, Australia $3.4m in first place, the UK $3.3m, Germany $3m, Mexico $2.9m, Spain $2.8m, Brazil $2.4m and Italy $1.6m. Remaining territories accounted for $26m.

    There were several minor benchmarks, among them the fourth biggest Disney opening weekend in India and the tenth biggest launch for the studio in South Korea.”

    Very strong 17,5 million debut in Russia.

  • Hi Pascal …thanks. Do you have admissions figures for the other days?
    One thing we are looking at is … how is the pattern for subsequent days compared to Prince of Persia?

    Is there a site (French language okay) that provides such info for France?

  • Hi, I’m Pascal from France. John Carter was n°1 on wednesday with some 1600 admissions on Paris, 85000 in the whole country. Prince of Persia began at 3000 admissions on Paris, for the record. Some estimate the movie could gather 800 000 admissions in all.

    The problem with John Carter is that the Burroughs novels are virtually unknown, they were published all for the first time in 1994, and were unavaliable since! The first 5 have been republished discreetly in february, with no mention of them being tied to the Disney movie…

    So, fingers crossed, the word of mouth seemed good, at least in my showing, with comments in the like of “it was not bad after all”, or “I thought it would be crappier”. Not bad considering I hardly live in a sci-fi friendly country!

  • Headwinds indeed. The knives were out and razor sharp long before this movie hit the screens. The eagerness some people seem to have in seeing it fail mystifies me. I can understand having no interest in a this sort of film, but gleefully rooting for it to bomb is ridiculous.
    I hadn’t been to a Friday night opening in a few years, so I have no idea what an average Friday movie night is – I wasn’t expecting Harry Potter-type crowds, but the whole complex was pretty light compared to what I remember Fridays being. And the 7:30 2D showing I saw was far from full. The up side was the audience seemed to respond to the film very well – I even heard as the credits rolled a woman behind me say, “Well I really liked that!” As they filed out she wondered if the books were available to read and another woman responded, “Probably not – they’re a 100 years old so long out of print I think”. Didn’t get the chance to correct her since they were quickly out of range for me to feel comfortable about informing her othewise (and yet again what does something like that tell us about the woeful marketing practices for this movie? Shameful).
    So I was a bit encouraged that word of mouth might help the movie. Fingers crossed…

  • Those news are fantastic, I knew it would do well overseas. Plus those numbers overseas are estimates no?! Since we don’t have Sunday’s numbers yet.

    I’ll stick with my prediction of minimum 300 million overseas, even if it crawls to 80 million in the US, I think that Disney would pull the trigger on a sequel.

  • Disney will certainly try to spin it that way and those of us rooting for the film will interpret it that way. There are a few films in the US that eventually made it to 200m US after starting at 30m — but a very few. A 30m opening normally projects out to about 100m domestic run. Andrew Stanton’s track record suggests maybe a 120m outcome in the US. But ….. it’s a little hard to project because the marketing was so ineffective it may have artificially depressed the opening weekend so that typical patterns don’t hold up very well. So far word of mouth seems to be good (not spectacular, but good).

    The foreign numbers do seem strong but there are no details yet on where they are coming from — which countries have been counted, and through what day. But yes …the foreign result has to be considered a positive.

    As JC would say: “We still live!”

  • Box Office Mojo has the three day total for John Carter listed as $100 Million including international ticket sales ($30 Million domestic, $70 Million foreign). I’d consider that pretty darn good. I have no idea how these things break down, but if a movie (even an expensive movie) makes that much in such a short period of time, wouldn’t it be considered a success? The Adventures of Tin Tin had a large budget, but made a very small amount in the North American Market, picking up most of its business elsewhere. This might actually become a pattern over time, with studios focusing more on international ticket sales. Japan and Italy had superior trailers, perhaps the marketing was handled better overseas. I had my problems with the movie, but it is certainly superior to most big budget Hollywood fare. Who knows? Maybe it will have a slow burn and actually turn out to be profitable. They made a sequel to Hellboy, and that movie only barely made back its budget domestically. Crazier things have happened.

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