Looking at the regular theaters I track, I'm going to be surprised if it doesn't open higher than the last film by fairly comfortable margin. I'm also getting the feel it could certainly make a run at a top 5 position (a top 10 spot is probably close to becoming a lock) on the all time opening charts. There are a few locations where I think it could be doing a bit better, but it also has the second most showings ever recorded, and the few theaters I'm talking about have it playing 30+ times a day with business spread out pretty well from open to close.

And the 3-day weekend total is pretty likely going to be the second biggest of all time.

I'm going to forgo doing a Weekend Forecast this evening so I can prepare to track it properly. I'll also have a weekend prediction up for it in a couple hours, followed by where said prediction would land it on various charts.

Highest Saturday Pre-Sales (2014-) [~50% of Market]

495,308 - Demon Slayer: Mugen Train (2020) *1st Saturday*
404,653 - Demon Slayer: Mugen Train (2020) *2nd Saturday*
260,329 - Yo-Kai Watch: It's the Secret of Birth, Nyan! (2014)
257,536 - Demon Slayer: Mugen Train (2020) *3rd Saturday*
176,259 - Demon Slayer: Mugen Train (2020) *5th Saturday*
170,054 - Frozen II (2019) *1st Saturday*
164,961 - Demon Slayer: Mugen Train (2020) *4th Saturday*
138,795 - Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015)
134,713 - Demon Slayer: Mugen Train (2020) *9th Saturday*
134,399 - Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (2017)
133,265 - Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019)
126,032 - Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017)
117,302 - Detective Conan: Crimson Love Letter (2017)
116,563 - Yo-Kai Watch: Great King Enma and the 5 Stories, Nyan! (2015)
115,572 - Detective Conan: The Scarlet Bullet (2021)
114,570 - One Piece Film Gold (2016)
113,434 - Detective Conan: Zero the Enforcer (2018)
112,474 - Evangelion 3.0+1.0: Thrice Upon a Time (2021)
108,780 - Demon Slayer: Mugen Train (2020) *7th Saturday*
106,945 - Detective Conan: The Fist of Blue Sapphire (2019)
106,493 - Demon Slayer: Mugen Train (2020) *11th Saturday*
103,969 - Frozen II (2019) *2nd Saturday*
x94,641 - Detective Conan: The Darkest Nightmare (2016)
x93,216 - Beauty and the Beast (2017) *1st Saturday*
x92,166 - Avengers: Endgame (2019)
x91,384 - Weathering With You (2019)
x88,838 - Toy Story 4 (2019)
x85,557 - Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom (2018)
x84,025 - Aladdin (2019)
x78,000 - Beauty and the Beast (2017) *2nd Saturday*

Okay, so while this is very, very good, it might look "low" to some of you. But I'll explain real quick:

First, it's higher than the previous two films. And the previous two films, despite the lower pre-sales versus a number of films, opened higher everything except for Demon Slayer, Yo-Kai Watch 1, and Frozen II.

Second, as you can see with the other Detective Conan films, they're big with reservations, but not overly so to the point of making them frontloaded. The last three films opened higher than all but the same three films in point one (Demon Slayer, Yo-Kai Watch 1, and Frozen II) despite the lower pre-sales. Detective Conan definitely has a big fanbase, but it also has a pretty large casual audience that comes out the day of to boost the overall sales, keeping it from being frontloaded.

Third, this is a lower share of theaters represented for this year's film since it's opening so wide. It's more like 45% of its standard theaters versus ~50%, and doesn't account for a large portion of its premium showings.

So, while the pre-sales don't appear like it's going to be abnormally larger than normal when compared to others on the list, they're a bit misleading at face value. It most definitely will outperform almost everything on the list.

Great start for the Little Great Detective.
The movie carried the momentum of two years of fans expectations in an already growing franchise, it was ecrtain to be huge!

Also, did Girls und Panzer host an event or something?
a 25% rise and back in the TOP-10 (even TOP-5 this friday) shoul have a reason.
Or is just another chapter in the refreshing uncertainty of the box office tracking?

Girls und Panzer and Ensemble Stars have some sort of event, giveaway, or other reason for being up. Unless you make an effort to follow the marketing of some of these smaller and/or limited releases, or are just a fan and know beforehand, it's difficult to know until the boost occurs.

But they don't have a lot of showings/seats, and will naturally have higher reservations from whatever is boosting them, but they still may not make the top 10 this weekend as day of business will be miniscule. Well, Ensemble Stars probably will since it was in the top 10 last week, but Girls und Panzer shouldn't.

I'll have a weekend prediction up for Detective Conan here in a bit. Trying to get a feel of how it's doing in the rural prefectures and on all those premium format showings.

https://twitter.com/TerryWolles/status/ ... 4343639042

According to this, it seems that Conan outsold Demon Slayer's opening day. Does that possibly mean that it will have a better first weekend than Demon Slayer?

No.

LOL. No. It has ~1.2 million seats at the usual locations, which they think is its opening day. Don't get data from Twitter.

Repeat after me: Nothing will ever come close to Demon Slayer's opening day or weekend. At least in our lifetimes. It's close to being a mathematical impossibility because Demon Slayer sold more tickets in its opening weekend than the amount of seating that most films are likely to ever achieve. Detective Conan is the second widest release ever, and even it would need to sellout of 89/90% of ALL of its showings from open to close all weekend long (not one seat empty) just to be considered a contender.

Demon Slayer truly broke the box office, and has spoiled any future films hoping to get any sort of records in their first day, weekend, and many weeks afterwards. We have to exclude it from any discussions.

Yeah came to say the same.
The tweet in question talks about the number of seating, wich Conan now has the second highest, second only to Demon Slayer
https://twitter.com/conan_boxoffice/sta ... 3496382468

Corpse, now that the Demon Slayer run is almost over and he will soon reach his final goals of ¥40Bn and 29 millions admissions, I would like to thank you for all the information you have given us throughout the run and thank you for having answered all the questions that I could ask you and to which you answered with kindness. It was a pleasure to follow this phenomenal run of DS and to follow the records week after week of this film with you.

My prediction for Detective Conan is:

Opening Weekend: ¥1.600 billion ($14.7 million) / 1.15 million admissions
3-Day Opening: ¥2.175 billion ($20.0 million) / 1.55 million admissions

It looks like it's slightly stronger than last year's film, and with all the extra theaters, it should open higher than it. Not guaranteed (revenue is more likely than admissions), but likely. I'll have a bunch of lists coming up soon to show where this debut would land it on various charts.

And I do think it has potential to go a little bit higher, but overpredicting is no fun.

No problem, dude.

And thanks. If I ever came off as a little agitated, apologies. I know it's been very exciting to follow, and was always just trying to make sure that expectations weren't getting overly out of hand considering it has (had) already achieved just about everything, including many records that are incredibly unlikely to be challenged, much less beaten. We can at least be grateful that it saved *some* records (though none especially big/important) attainable for the future.

@corpse what is the local count of this one and DS during first weekend.

Conan 259 usual locs has per loc avg of 915 while 24 Independent locs is 975.

Looking back, DS was 2523 on usual locs (267) while 2331 on 24 Independent locs. DS Indepent locs metric was bit off in first few days of run, but this seems right. The untracked locs was 181k admits, on remaining locs, which I suppose to get from you.

Detective Conan prediction added to all the below lists.


All-Time Opening Weekends - REVENUE


All-Time Opening Weekends - ADMISSIONS


Biggest *Modern* Opening Weekends (2008-) [REVENUE]


Biggest *Modern* Opening Weekends (2008-) [ADMISSIONS]


*Modern = Post-Previews/Early Showings Era. More accurate to compare opening weekends from 2008-Present to one another since a lot of big films had previews (sometimes equal to or bigger than their actual openings) added to their openings before 2008. Eiren ruled that studios could no longer practice this in 2010.

And there you go! Huge impact on all the opening weekend charts if it lands around my prediction.

Detective Conan broke the theater count record this weekend with 498 locations due to opening in all premium format theaters. Demon Slayer opened in 403 theaters (365 standard + 38 IMAX locations), then added a few more standard theaters in the next week or two, and later expanding to 4D/MX4D in December and Dolby Cinema in March (but it had given up some IMAX locations and 4D/MX4D locations to Evangelion by then).

However, it's going to be hard to project Conan in trying to calculate how well its doing outside of the usual locations due to the huge theater count. All the extra ones are premium format locations (4D/MX4D, Dolby Cinema), and their screen sizes vary greatly. Some are small, seating 100 or less, while others are your typical large screens that seat 500. And they usually don't have as many screens and showings available versus a typical standard theater.

This makes predicting it using normal methods more difficult as there's more room for error.

So quick note before I begin the hourly ticket sales:

Interestingly, the Detective Conan films have been performing better on Sunday versus Saturday in recent years. I don't know if that'll be the case again this year, but here is how they've behaved since 2017:

Saturday: DC21 > DC22 > DC23
Sunday: DC23 > DC22 > DC21
Weekend: DC23 > DC22 > DC21

As you can see, they've been growing over their opening weekends, but coming in LOWER on Saturday and HIGHER on Sunday. So there is the chance this trend could continue, with DC24 coming in lower once again on Saturday and higher than its predecessors on Sunday, and thus for the weekend itself, but we'll have to see how it plays out.

This year's release is more unique in that it was delayed a year, is playing much wider, and is at every premium format theater, with many not accounted for at the usual locations, which *could* pull some business away from them.

We'll find out what happens together.

Ohh. That's a huge release. 380-400K OD admits seems like a good range.

Sat I suppose will be 330-340K range. That shall give 550-575K overall admits. Yeah Corpse predictions seems about right.

I think I lowballed it (a little). LOL.

It's outpacing its predecessors pretty convincingly today, and it'll continue to build a commanding lead once it gets into the afternoon/mid-day (the first showings that began filling up). Even if it would slow down after 8/9pm (and it didn't much yesterday because some theaters in Tokyo are open until 10/10:30pm this weekend), I believe its lead will be too much to overcome. Most (probably all) of the showings at Toho Shinjuku for example are going to be 80%+ full from 7-10pm (and there's 15 showings just in that time frame at this theater), which could add around 4,000-5,000 admissions from there alone after 7pm.

If Toho Shinjuku was back at full operating hours, it likely would have broke 50 showings there (it still got 43 showings there today). They're so busy, they are open 20-21 hours a day (7am-3/4am) when a big film like this opens and pretty much every showing at LEAST hits 50% capacity, but much more regularly over 70/80%. There are several thousands of people seeing a movie there at almost any moment. One day, I will see a movie at this theater.

I think it'll make a real play at hitting 400,000 at the usual locations today. But it probably won't have the same Sunday increase the last two films did, rather probably remaining fairly flat (maybe a slight jump).

This guy is a diviner !