Nobody has been more pessimistic about covid than me around here, but I really think we are about to get an eye of the storm type of weekend. Things might go to shit again right after, most certainly after St Patricks Day, but let us enjoy this while we can.

Tom and Jerry opened to $14M while available for free at home. Raya is $30, which nobody wants to pay for a home release. It doesn’t look as good as Disney’s other recent outputs, but the pent-up demand to go out again will override that.

I'm gonna go with no. I think 20m is a possibility if more California counties open this week but doing almost double WW seems impossible, especially since Regal said they're not reopening until LA does.

Nope. 20 Million would be impressive and I can't see it going higher. I do agree people won't want to pay $30 for this at home but it's way more than that to take a family to the movies. I also feel like plenty of people will be content waiting for this. But with New York theaters being open and the rental on this being more than a month of HBOMax I think more will be willing to go see it in a theater rather than pay that. So it should definitely do more than Tom & Jerry.

$20m-$25m is where I'm at. It should do bonkers at D+because as Mike mentioned theater visit with a family coats more than purchase at VOD. I also redirect Raya to have great legs.

Critical reviews are on par with Zootopia, Moana and Frozen. Hopefully it’s actually as good as those.

Im hoping the boxoffice thaws since conditions are improving. I want to see Raya get above a $20M OW. That will be a huge win.

Reviews are terrific. So it should be able to do over 20 Million this weekend. That will be so great to see.

I think $15-$20M is a safer spot for Raya IMO, but you never know under these new conditions. I'm not seeing an opening over $30M though and I hope it does overperform.

Apparantly Cinemark theaters aren't playing Raya.

Oops dp

I wonder what the "unfair terms" consist of? Disney has less to lose here, I think, so I'm presuming they're the ones with the "unfair terms", but I don't know what it could possibly be? First thing that comes to mind is a disagreement about Disney having it on Disney+ on the same day and Cinemark not liking that, but that's been known for months now.

My local independent theater isn't getting in this weekend either. They've been good at getting most new films on opening weekend since the pandemic too, so kind of unusual. Makes me wonder if Disney has asked for a higher share of the profit from theaters with future releases, beginning with Raya? A sleazy move if true, which would further hurt theaters while bolstering their own Disney+ service by "forcing" audiences to stream it if some theaters don't (or can't afford) play their films.

Here we go again. Disney has got a great PR team behind them. They are really no better (even worse) than most studios in handling these situations, yet somehow they always come out unscathed out of every controversy.