It'll end when they start making crappy movies heh, and I don't see that happening soon.

Well Cars is doing great, but its definitely not Pixar at the top of their game (will likely be 15-20% lower than the average admissions of the best five out of six predecessors. 5 out of their previous 6 releases would now adjust at $275 m and above, with only A Bug's Life around $229 m. So Cars is doing great, but it, along with Over The Hedge, definitely felt the sting of CGI overload of animated films.

I think thats a natural life cycle. The same thing happened with Disney 2D animation on a smaller scale. It was all upwards until the first summer release The Lion King and then they started to drop - but worse than the CGI flicks. Nemo representing Lion King. However, considering Cars was the 3rd major CGI flick in as many months and perhaps lost a bit of the female audience - it did incredibly well. I dont think Ratatouillie will be quite as strong next summer.

Cars survived the "burnout," I'd say. While DP07's prediction was a little too unrealistic, $175-200 million wouldn't have surprised me at all. It looked like the least interesting Pixar film yet, but thanks to WOM, it's going to pull much more.

Here are adjusted figures:

Incredibles $277,523,297.66
Finding Nemo $371,376,639.30
Monster's Inc $298,006,442.40
Toy Story 2 $319,027,079.52
A Bug's Life$228,820,499.04
Toy Story 1 $290,648,452.40

AVG: $297.6 m

So with a $240 m finish or so, Cars would be about 19.4% lower admissions than the other films on average. It's definitely a great total, but Disney did spend $7 billion + acquiring Pixar, and investors haven't seemed to be too happy with Cars results, even now.

You can't be super huge forever. Even the greatest of stars have lesser films in terms of box office.

I personally think it is quite amazing that all of their films may be over $250 million adjusted (if Cars gets there). Hell, I'd still be amazed with all of their films over $200 million. Before, it could be called a fluke, but with 7 Pixar films now all proving VERY strong box office grosses, I consider Pixar the most consistent, safest bet yet. I don't care what the investors think! I can't believe you brought them into the picture. How about we do that for all franchises/films now? Heh.

PEACE, Mike.

Well I had to bring them into the picture, they're who Disney cares about. Many financial analysts attributed Disney's lack of major change in their stock price following POTC 2's record opening to the fact that Cars didn't meet analyst expectations. Disney's most watched film this year was Cars investor wise, as that was their big corporate move this year. Even with POTC doing $450 m, investors were really scrutinizing Cars moreso, because of the $7.4 billion deal. It's just how the business works, even if it doesn't make any sense (ie. POTC 2 is doing $400 m +, give Cars some space, nope, it unfortunately doesn't tend to happen, that companies will get cut some slack...).

Well Its pretty obvious now that Pirates is heading for a 55% drop this week. It will drop around 15-20% Wednesday and another 10% on Thursday, so it might be under 11 million on Thursday. 20 million is almost not gonna happen now, I think a 17- 18 million friday is expected at this time.

That will be near a 68% drop from its opening Friday Though it shoud rebound over the weekend to maybe 58% drop. I think our best case scenario is now a 54% drop to 63 million.

I only mentioned it because none of us here care about the investors, and we look at raw box office grosses because that's what we're interested in. If we're gonna use the investors reaction/thoughts in our box office arguments, let's do it for all films, not just Pixar. Heh.

Anyways, I do know what you mean when you say that. You are one the strongest analysts here on the site. You always whip up facts and stats on the drop of a hat, and your blog is cool.

PEACE, Mike.

PEACE, Mike.

Thanks! Much appreciated. I also promise to have a new edition up for this weekend (I went on vacation, had exams, work full time, so I haven't been able to update as much as I would have liked). But I definitely am going to have some fun ones coming up.

Also, I guess its for everyone's interest that we don't talk too much about investors, as I don't have the nicest things to say to WB's investors about its performance so far this summer. We don't have enough forums for that.

How is it going up 65%?

The first POTC went up 63% on Friday.

PEACE, Mike.

I think you are overestimating its drops for Wednesday and Thursday.

The point is that Shrek movies aside, Pixar is really the only CGI brand that still guarantees $200+ million grosses for its movies without even resorting to sequels. Even Dreamworks' highest profile CGI movie Shrek aside, Madagascar, didn't make it to $200 million last summer. That is pretty impressive.

Ratatouille should be more kid-friendly, so I definitely see $250+ million.

Ratatouille seems stuck in the summer, rather than Nov. With HP, and The Grinch, Disney had to move away from their trademark Thanksgiving release strategy that they held for most of the 90's. Now, both HP and a Pixar film are in the summer, and the Thanksgiving slot is still there. There is "Bee Movie," and "Beowolf," and Disney's "Enchanted" coming out earlier in November, but I think Ratatouille can outdo all of them. I think there is some hesitance on putting Pixar there because Disney has their own animated film that they want for November, but I honestly think that a mid Nov release for Ratatouille, and a December release for Enchanted could allow both films to do well, and not affect each other too much. But the key is, a less crowded time. Considering Ice Age 2 could do nearly $195 m in March, I would like to see how a Pixar film would do outside of the summer/Nov. and December. Ie could Pixar pull a $250 m + grosser from other times of the year, or do they really need the weekdays...

Here comes the Cars Spinmeister Maestro.

Disney Studio head and Pixar chief (in their OWN words) expected it to replicate/in the vein of Finding Nemo's success. That was the reason this movie was moved to summer. The performance is NOT even close to Nemo. But the movie performed above this other poster's expectations. So Disney surely must have thought screw our own expectations and realigned theirs with his.

I think Disney and Pixar got a little too excited when The Incredibles had the same opening as Finding Nemo and somewhat disappointed when it "only" grossed about $260 million instead of $300 million.

Opening was semi-disappointing but since then it has been doing great. 250 from 60 is not bad at all, regardless of what Nemo did. Disney doesn't have to be happy but they should be.

You just don't get it.

What they expected were legs similar to Finding Nemo, not the total gross. And with its 4+ multiplier, it'll have the best legs for any CGI animated film since...

...

Ah yeah Finding Nemo.

jb, you do realize that you're getting a quote from like a year and a half ago, right? And you think after that long, people keep the same expectations?

It's like when you predicted a year ago that Pirates would make less than $200 million total because you thought the original sucked. Did you still expect that a week ago? If you did, then I guess there's not much to say except...wow.

Just like some I did not think Cars would pass $200M. That is besides the point. The studio sets the expectations, not me or other BO follwers/predictors. If the studio sets it too high then they are idiots.

Seriously, ever since I know jb, he's been in this love affair with Dreamworks and hating Pixar. For whatever reason. So I should stop taking his anti-Pixar statements seriously.

IMO, it really came down to the summer competition that both films faced + Nemo seemed more "cutesy wootsyish," and CGI overload affected Cars.

Here was Cars' competition in the summer 2006 (ie before and after for family crowds):

Before release:

Ice Age 2 (in its 6th week when the summer started, but still made nearly $194 m in total so far).
The Wild (mid April release, not successful, but adding to CG fatigue that hurt Cars)
RV (2nd week was when summer started, and made $50 m + in summer)
Hoot (Flopped)
Akeelah and the Bee (disappointed)
Over The Hedge ($38.5 m/$150 m ish). This felt CG excess as well. It was in its 4th week when Cars opened.
Xmen 3 (Huge younger audience, $230 m +)

So far:
Cars 2nd weekend: Nacho Libre, FATF3, and Garfield likely took at least some audience away.
Cars 4th: Superman (quite a bit of overlap, 37% drop)
Cars 5th: POTC 2 (quite a bit of overlap, but great hold)

Future:
Monster House (July 21)
Ant Bully (July 28)
Barnyard (Aug 4)
Zoom (Aug 11)

So Cars had to deal with 2 $150 m CG films in just the two months prior to its release.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now here is Finding Nemo:

Releases Before summer:
Holes ($22 m made in the summer)

Summer:
X2 (some overlap, but quickly finished its run, thus hardly affected Nemo, which opened at the end of the month). Xmen 3 and Cars were much closer, although Xmen 3 was also a nonfactor really, by that time.
Daddy Day Care (the only family film really for May)

The weekend Nemo came out, Daycare made $6.7 m, and that had been the only real film cattering to family audiences. Nemo was the first CG animated film (not including Veggie Tales) since March 2002's Ice Age 1. So close to 14-15 months had passed since the last CG animated film, thus helping Nemo moreso. Cars had to deal with 2 big CG animated films in just two months, as well as The Wild during that time as well. CG fatigue to the max.

3rd weekend: Rugrats Go Wild (disappoints with $11.6 m opening, but they were on their way downhill)
Hulk -> I thought it was a bit more mature, so only slight overlap, but not really that much.
6th weekend: Sinbad (flops with $7 m opening over long weekend)
7th weekend: POTC 1
8th weekend: Johnny English (flop)
9th weekend: SK 3D (The only core family film to do well in the 9 weeks following Nemo's release)
11th weekend: Freaky Friday (success, but probably alot more teens than Nemo's core audience)

So in summer 2003, Nemo really only had the holdover of Daddy Day Care, which was really not a factor anymore. Following that, only SK 3D was able to be a big family success, along with Freaky Friday, which skewed a bit older. POTC took quite a bit of the audience away I'm sure, but skewed older as well. Nemo imo really didn't have any real competition AT ALL that summer, that didn't look like it was going to disappoint anyhow (ie a Sinbad Movie wasn't going to do well). It had lots of time to itself.

Cars on the otherhand doesn't have the benefit of being the only CG animated film in 13 months like Nemo did. Nemo had Veggie Tales, and then Ice Age 1 13 months earlier. Cars has had 8 CG animated films opening in the 13 months before it, with 4 of those doing $125 m +, and 3 doing $150 m or more (Madagascar, Ice Age 2, and Over The Hedge).


In conclusion, Nemo had relatively light competition all summer, while Cars really doesn't. But the bigger factor at play is computer animation fatigue. And with THREE of them coming out in three weeks starting just next week, it seems that it will only get more profound...

Zing: I thought POTC2 would do $194M total which it might do in 7 days.

But there is a difference when studio chiefs set the expectations who have the power to move the release date and all kinds of quality control over their products, screw up.

Dr.L. You don't get it. Jobs does not talk about legs. He expected it to "replicate" Nemo's success. May fall behind Nemo by about $350M WW. It may fall $150M behind Incredible, whose "underperformance" prompted the Cars release data move.

The cars legs have to do with a concerted effort by disney to get this movie to retain its theaters. My speculation would be that Disney wants Cars to pass $250M domestic to put the $7.4B pixar deal in better light.

Further, you are absolutely right that I prefer DW type of movies over Pixar. Just like picking a PC over a mac. But you don't see me praising OTH performance either even though that will end close to a 4 multiplier.

But he made that comment in December of 2004, not like a month before Cars was released. Since then, there's obviously been a decline in computer animated films' grosses and even companies adjust their expectations based on tracking and such.