You guys are putting too much faith in DiCaprio. And I don't know why you would put any faith whatsoever in Pitt.

This is his decade of movies.

Title (click to view) Studio Lifetime Gross / Theaters Opening / Theaters Rank
12/25/15 The Revenant Fox $183,637,894 3,711 $474,560 4 3
12/25/13 The Wolf of Wall Street Par. $116,900,694 2,557 $18,361,578 2,537 9
5/10/13 The Great Gatsby (2013) WB $144,840,419 3,550 $50,085,185 3,535 6
12/25/12 Django Unchained Wein. $162,805,434 3,012 $30,122,888 3,010 5
11/9/11 J. Edgar WB $37,306,030 1,985 $11,217,324 1,910 17
7/16/10 Inception WB $292,576,195 3,792 $62,785,337 3,792 2

Only J Edgar was critical and commercial flop. Look at his movie performances otherwise in diverse genres and none of these movies would be this huge without Leo(may be except Inception). This is his 1st movie since Revenant and there would be huge audience expectation. We will know once Fandango PS starts

Pitt does not do lot of big movies. When he does them they do great. he is big recognizable star.

QT with Leo and Pitt and great reviews as well. That is a recipe for Yuge success.

Respected director, big star, great release date ... and The Wolf of Wall Street could only manage $116m. Why? Because of the subject matter. It's not mainstream enough. Just as a 60s take on the film industry through the eyes of a star and his stuntman isn't.

60s Hollywood isn’t mainstream but Charles Manson is. We’ll see to what extent the conversation around the film revolves around that as the release date approaches.

That also competed against several high profile adult skewing award dramas cuz it was Oscar season. This won’t have that obstacle

Wolf opened in Christmas season, as a hard R film about... Wall Street. And had a 6.36 multiplier. It's the #3 "true crime" film of all time, behind another Leo film, and a Denzel film.

How is Charles Manson mainstream? None of the movies featuring him have done well. Literally not one.

None of them were big films like this one done in a big way with real stars and fanfare. Charles Manson is mainstream in that he's infamous and a household name and people are very curious to see Tarantino's take on him. It's something that makes the film special and a conversation starter.

Wolf also came right after the financial crisis.

Yeah fame isn’t synonymous with mainstream.

This might fall about $10 mil short... but we'll see. Could get a re-release around Oscar noms?

QT needed to make a more mainstream and marketable movie for this to happen. That Tate and there Manson angle took a huge backseat to Dalton's dying career hurt.

I think most were expecting the plot to revolve around Dalton's growing relationship with Tate and Cliff's growing into the Manson Family. Instead it just follows 1 day and 2 nights in their life.

Eh, $10-15 million short isn't the worst club failure. It was also tough to call how godawful this summer would be for non-Disney product.

I’m certain Django would have been big no matter what. Probably Tarantino’s most mainstream movie.

I think the non-Disney movies pretty much played to par. There were a lot of movies with questionable buzz, marketing, concepts, and franchises.

The movie should make a profit for the studio, but for the paradigm I consider this a loss. The studio sort of saw the writing on the wall, but in terms of the social capital invested in the idea of this movie, it didn’t do well; for the idea of making a film with 3 of Hollywood’s most recognizable names, it’s not a win; it won’t help the genre; it fits in with the trend of declining star-power; and it’s just further evidence that many people will wait for streaming for a movie like this. If it were successful in context of the zeitgeist, there wouldn’t have been a 63m opening club and no one would have called a 40m opening unthinkable.

What is this going to end with $135-$140m? Maybe a little more with an awards re-release? Not shabby at all in an age of declining star power and the almost complete banishment of these mid size films at theatres.

I loved it but can also see why it did not break out any further. Joe and Jane Popcorn were expecting something very different.

IB and Django also had two of the most well known parts of US history. If they looked like just another movie, like a wind-talkers, it wouldn’t have helped, but they were different. I don’t like the idea of dehumanizing people, but Brad Pitt’s speech about nazis was made to print money.

Anyway, I don’t remember you guys making these arguments in the 63m opening thread. If you accept the limitations on this movie’s potential, it did well in that context, but it didn’t live up to the buzz many people assumed to represent its prospects.

It's doing good. Tbh I'm surprised its legs have been good but they have been. I think even with Leo, without the Tarantino hype this would've done sub-75m.

I think once it became obvious this wasn't "Tarantino does the Manson murders!!" we should've realized it wasn't going to break out.