Posted on 07/07/2019 9:10:08 AM PDT by EdnaMode
EARLY SUNDAY AM UPDATE: Sony is calling the 6-day opening of Sony’s Spider-Man: Far From Home at $185M which reps a record for a 6-day Independence Day launch and the Culver City studio’s best opening over that number of days. Both records were previously held by Sony’s 2004 Spider-Man 2 which made $180M over the July 4th 6-day stretch. Industry estimates for Far From Home are around $184.5M at 4,634 theaters, still excellent. 10-day global for Far From Home is an amazing $580M. By the way, remember we said Far From Home would get to at least $170M when it hit tracking? The possibility of of that comes from other beloved mega franchises like Transformers, Spider-Man and Despicable Me‘s July 4th box office history and the halo effect from Avengers: Endgame. Those were self-fulfilling prophecies here for Far From Home. CinemaScore was a solid A, the same as Spider-Man: Homecoming. Under 35 gave the movie an A+.
Sony will be reporting their official box office Sunday AM estimates soon.
Far From Home posted its second best day yesterday during the course of its run with $34M after Tuesday’s opening record of $39.2M. Saturday was 5% up from Friday’s $32.5M. Far From Home‘s 3-day is at $93.1M which in terms of FSS that played around the July 4th holiday is the second-best behind 2011’s Transformers: Dark of the Moon with $97.8M.
Sony strategically moved Far From Home from its July 5th opening to July 2 in order to gain some power heading into the Independence Day holiday which can sometimes be unforgiving to titles. It was a great holiday this year with Far From Home’s $25.1M being the second best July 4th ever after Transformers‘ $29M in 2007. Also, Sony gave Far From Home a 17-day window before Disney’s Lion King in which it will have all the premium ticketing formats like Imax (which earned the best ever opening for a Sony pic at $15M at 414 screens), Dolby, and PLF.
For our previous box office updates on Far From Home, go here.
The other title to brave the shadows of Far From Home was A24’s Midsommer, the second feature directed by Ari Aster. The pic made $6.5M in 6th place over the last 3 days and $10.9M since its Wednesday opening. Though a few nickels ahead of tracking it’s not a mindblowing opening for a pic that cost under $10M. Exhibitors aren’t forgiving when it comes to films that haven’t performed at the summer box office, and will easily hand over auditorium inventory to the next tentpole bride, and unfortunately Midsommar performed on the coasts and softern then average everywhere else. Trailers were fiercely cool and original–a break-up story set against the upside down world of a gross Swedish Midsummer festival. A24 employed largely a social and digital media push, but RelishMix wasn’t impressed with the 33M+ social media universe count across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. Other horror films have reached an SMU of 82.1M. The pic is more suspense than horror, but was clearly sold as a horror film. Nonetheless as is typical with arthouse-horror hybrids, it’s a divide between genre-philes and critics, the latter who embraced the film at 82% fresh and the former who dismissed it with a C+ CinemaScore. Aster’s Hereditary without a July 4th holiday did better with $17.2M and it also wasn’t a film that critics and audiences saw eye-to-eye with respective grades of 89% certified fresh on RT and a D+ CinemaScore. Many argue that the cinema needs original movies; that’s what the box office needs, right? Well, here’s Midsommar. But it was challenged by a horror sequel in the market, Annabelle 3 which made $9.7M in weekend 2 (and a great -52% hold, and $50.1M 12-day tally), plus the Aster pic has a 2 hour 27 minute running time.
Kinda sorta off topic from the thread direction, but I saw this film opening day, enjoyed very much. BUT Tuesday’s are Senior discount day at our cimema, but not for this film. What!? The manager told us he has been there 15 years & this was the first time ever he was instructed by the “distributors” (Sony, Disney?) that no discounts were to be offered on opening day. My cousin & I chuckled & said, yep, they want the full opening day dollars.
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