http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/movie ... ref=movies


Fucking ridiculous. That would make Avatar barely a $400m film in 2008 avg. ticket price terms.

Yeah, but it still has a lot of gas left in the tank, and that seems to assume a 40% premium for the total gross, which I dunno about.

what

So Avatar needs to gross about $730m to match TDK in admissions?

The total box office isn't what's the most impressive about Avatar as clearly there was a huge 3D premium. The legs are what make its run especially memorable.

But imagine if it did have regular priced tickets, if it does $750 m in 3D, that would be perhaps $577 m with regular priced tickets.

It's opening weekend would have been $59 m.

So it would have done $577 m domestically off of a $59 m opening weekend (9.74 multiplier)!

It would have been #62 on the biggest opening weekends of all time, but still managed to get that close to Titanic! Interestingly, Titanic's opening weekend would adjust to about $46.6 m or so in 2009.

The legs are definitely the highlight of its run! It showed the best legs for a $20 m + opener of the past decade!

Well, if we went by Brandon's last report that 3D has produced 80% of the business thus far:

2D = $111m
3D = $444m

= $555m

$111m/$7.35 ('09 avg. ticket price) = 15.1m

Which leaves 40.9m admissions to come from 3D.

$444m/40.9M = $10.86

$10.86/$7.35 = 47.7% premium

Seems like it could be high, but maybe not?

Brandon's estimate on 2009 ticket price is WAY off imo. Off by at least a dime.

I'd put TDK's avg. at $8 due to IMAX and because very little of its gross could come from discount theatres, since it made its money so quickly at the start. So that would be 67m or so admissions.


A $10 avg. ticket price for Avatar, which I think is a pretty reasonable estimate (I paid $16.7) would mean it'd have to gross $670m to match TDK's admissions. And of course it will, heh.

I'm pretty sure the average ticket price comes from an independent source, sort of like exhibitor relations?

I don't think that's too high, actually. Also, we have to add IMAX to the mix. As I said above, my ticket cost $16.7, and that was IMAX 3D. That easily translates into a 48%+ premium over normal ticket prices.

I agree. I'd put it at $7.5.

This is also why Avatar is nowhere near the kind of phenomenon Titanic was. I'd say globally it's somewhat around ROTK/HP1, and domestically on par with SM1, Shrek 2, and The Passion in terms of hype and broad appeal.

Yeah, apparently he gets the average price from the MPAA if you look at the bottom of the column to the right:

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/about/adjuster.htm

That's kinda harsh. Shrek 2 didn't really have that much intense hype. It just had the best opening weekend of the year, an open field (Van Helsing and Troy both were big disappointments). It was also the first family film in many weeks.

It was just a very well liked movie yet again. There was more demand to see it because there was nothing else really that moviegoers were seeing in droves before it, but I don't think it was as heavily hyped as Spider-man or The Passion were. It was very well liked by many though.

I admit, the goodwill of the first film was huge in its success. But a 65% jump probably wouldn't have happened in any of the other May films not called Day After Tomorrow had done well...

Nah, it has beaten those movies in many countries already (in admissions) and it will do so in many more countries to come...

i think tdk made only 63m from imax. so if you think it had 50% premium(which i dont think is the average), you should just reduce 21m from tdk's gross and divide it by 2d average ticket price. i think it made around 2m from dollar theaters as well. so that should be taken into consideration.

of course titanic had extended dollar theater release. i dont know if that was taken into account while calculating its ticket sales.

People just have to put numbers into perspective. Ice Age 3 aided by 3D became a $700 m film overseas after the last film did $460 m or so. It saw a huge jump. 3D just set the bar much, much higher that the next Ice Age film in 3D probably could do $850 m imo overseas with 3D.

I think in the next three years, we'll see a film pass $1 billion ww, that couldn't pass $250 m domestically.

It's dollar theater run seemed to kick in around the $590m mark (Jul. 17-19th):

http://boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=w ... itanic.htm

Also, FYI, being a "barely $400 m" film in just 6 weeks time isn't exactly bad!

tdk made $49m from imax iirc

Rough calcuation: in 2008, the average ticket price is $7.18, IMAX $12.80. TDK's IMAX gross was $49m, so its # of admissions should be (533-49)/7.18 + 49/12.80 ~= 71.2m.

Except I think it also played more heavily in urban markets, where the ticket prices are higher. This is a total guess, but I think it's true. The NYT fortunately has all time lists for New York City:

http://movies.nytimes.com/indexes/2010/ ... index.html


TDK made around 7.8% of its total in New York, Titanic 6.4%, Avatar around 7%, Spider-Man 1 7.4%, TPM 6.1%, Spider-Man 2 7%, Shrek 2 5.7%, SM3 7.4%, Iron Man 7.3%, etc.

I also have no doubt that TDK played more heavily in Chicago, since Nolan's Gotham is inspired by Chicago, so there's little doubt that two of the three biggest urban markets, at least, contributed a disproportionately greater share to TDK's gross.

This is why admissions figures in the U.S. can only be an educated guess.

i am certain almost every blockbuster plays really strong in urban markets. sellouts are seen in big cities like nyc,la,chicago,sfc etc more than smaller towns(except midnights/od). you cannot make a random conclusion that tdk was more urban skewing that other films unless we have concrete data.

by that account average ticket rates are meaningless. how do we know % breakdown across cities and children/adult breakdown. plus not all theaters in a city charge the same rate.

I just listed several films in New York and how comic book films there, at least, played better than films like Titanic or Shrek 2 that would have broader appeal in the suburbs and rural areas. I don't see anything unreasonable in the assumption that TDK derived a disproportionately larger amount of its total from cities, given how profoundly urban the film and its narrative are.

Btw, this article from 2003 gives the 2003 avg. ticket price in NYC as $10.25.

http://cinematreasures.org/news/11180_0_1_0_C/

If ticket prices there increased by the same amount as nationwide, then the avg. for 2008 would be $12.2. That corresponds to around 3.4m admissions for TDK from NYC for a municipal total of $41.5m.