I think Friday was 11m, 16m is the early Saturday estimate for China.

... but yeah 12m across all the other countries is pretty poor.

Did it really go wrong?

Without the brand this doesn’t look like a blockbuster. Drawing non-fans was always going to be more challenging than people were pretending it would be.

I think another thing that may have clouded judgement was how much of a phenomenon Pokemon Go was but... that was free lol. So idk this definitely should've been a bigger movie but as videovgame adaptations go it's not a bad opening domestically.

12M OS-China Friday. And it's opened in all markets except Russia and a bunch of weaklings.

This is not "pretty bad". This is a disaster. It may end up with 125M DOM and 225M OS. Sub-Dumbo WW in play.

What's the best-case scenario for it now? That it legs out domestically to $200M and internationally to $300M? That wouldn't be too bad.

I believe the release date is the #1 reason for its "under-performance". Now, I don't think release dates necessarily affect any films' performance to a large degree, but acting as a followup to a release like Endgame after just a two week window is difficult, and that probably cost it a decent amount in casual viewership.

The same is likely also true for many international markets. Maybe an August release (the 9th or 14th/16th) would have been a better spot, since there isn't an ideal week throughout all of June and July.

As for Japan, I really don't think any release date until November or December would have helped it perform any better than it is (which is really "fine", but most see it as disappointing because "it's Japan!"). May/June aren't typically good months for tentpoles; July already has a Pokemon film; August is always very crowded from big July holdovers and numerous tentpoles of its own (plus it'd be too soon after the annual Pokemon film); September is only good for adult-skewing tentpoles; October is the weakest month of the year... So, only November/December would have worked out beneficially, honestly.

Yeah. Endgame wasn't just a big movie. It was fucking monumental. But the release is an excuse. Nobody cares about Pokemon.

Yeah I'm on team "Let's wait until the next of kin identifies the body before we do the autopsy" BUT if I were to eventually call it, I would say it was down to being the first live-action Pokemon and it was some semi-ironic film noir take, not like, about a kid getting one from the professor and having to go through all the gyms and learning to be the Master or something.

Expectations went wrong.

Its fucking Pokemon. That shit was cool in like 1999.

Pokemon GO.

That was the problem here. It fooled everyone into thinking this would be as popular.

Agree with the last three posts, starting with Skyblade's. I wonder, would a more classic Pokemon storyline (beefed up to make it more interesting) have served the first live action movie better? I think it might've.

The latest generation of Pokemon, Sun and Moon, sold 25 million copies. The core games will be eternally popular.

And its a world full of cute critters that fight each other. Why can’t it be a successful movie franchise?

It’ll be small hit in the end.

I don't think DPD looked like or delivered that

BOM has the OS total at $112m now.

It's looking that way. Still has a shot at $500m WW if legs don't collapse, which might be good enough for a sequel.

I think it did fine. Not as well as it could have done, obviously. But I think it landed in a zone where a lot of films fail. It is essentially a kids movie, but it's trying to target adults. The same thing happened to Shazam!. Although Shazam! was probably a little bit the other way, being a more "adult" movie that tried to target kids.

I think this film should be a typical $$70-$75m/$180-$210m type grosser. Its currently under performing on the OW side but can still come in at the lower end of that total.

Overall it should be a moderate success.

What if I told you...it’s not a failure

Needs to get to $132 mil for the biggest video game adaptation record.

Its not a failure, it just didnt come close to the hype.

It will. It will be nearly at 100m by the beginning of the next week

Should be well over 100. Should be able to hit 33-37 million 4 Day.

Saw this today and almost fell asleep.

Had higher hopes but it really wasn't anything groundbreaking...