Big audience on-hand on Thrs. night for Godzilla, even at the screening I was at (a rarity in the Ocean State lol).

Will track the numbers this weekend. So far this nugget from Boxofficeguru:

Massive $9.3M THU shows (7p on) for #Godzilla incl huge $2.1M from just #IMAX. That's over 2x what PacificRim did last July.

I really wonder what the ASM2 numbers will be. They're at 550 now, and I believe they needed to get to 700 or 750 to break even. (Assuming a budget of 225 to 250 million) Will they be able to onto much of their Chinese numbers from last week? If the ticket sales drop off by half, as I suspect they will, it's quite possible that they may not actually break even until home video. Which could well put them in the same ballpark as what happened with Star Trek ID last year...

FWIW --

GODZILLA's Thursday night shows were nearly 10% over Spidey.

Nikki Finke posited that Godzilla's over/under was $77/$65 mil for the weekend. Looks like it's going be way OVER that number by possibly quite a lot, especially when kids go this weekend (many of them are still in school).

So, a "Monster" weekend for Godzilla?

(Ducking the flames and pies)

I think overall word of mouth will be strong despite the issues with the human drama narrative. People will be curious to see the climactic battle.

mkaroly wrote:I think overall word of mouth will be strong despite the issues with the human drama narrative. People will be curious to see the climactic battle.

I doubt anyone will be disappointed by the end. Lots of applause when the credits rolled...has been a while since I've heard it.

Deadline (no longer with Nikki Finke) is projecting 90 million this weekend for Godzilla.

They're also projecting that ASM2 will pass 600 million for sure, but they're also hinting that it may not get to 755 million, which is what it would need to be profitable. My instincts say that it's going to fall somewhere close to 100 million dollars short of the mark. Which means they'll have to make that up in home video sales this fall, in the same way that Star Trek ID was forced to do last year. They shouldn't have a problem doing so, but this is not going to be the cash cow they were looking for. The smart move here will be for them to dial back all their proposed sequels and just focus on doing one movie at a time - the way that people have been doing this stuff for, oh, about a century now... And maybe they might even try to keep the budget under 100 million dollars. Of course, that's just a thought...

Or how about a budget just under $175-$200 million? lol

It's shocking to me given how the first ASM turned out that this film wasn't only more of the same, by all accounts it was worse. Overstuffed with unappealing villains, it was almost like they were using the Schumacher Batman films as a template. Even if the movie is profitable, it's not going to be the hit they were looking for no matter where it ends up...but it's like they've had the release dates more in mind before the films were ready, which reminds me of the two PIRATES sequels shot back to back.

No wonder why Sony as a corporation is in such dire financial trouble.

If were running Sony, I'd dump Marc Webb, hire a new director, and figure out a new direction for another sequel...but they're already so far along the line on ASM3 I'm guessing, that's not going to happen.

This from Boxofficeguru this morning:

Fans flood theaters for #Godzilla. Mammoth $38.5M opening day incl THU night. Heading to mid 90s wknd. May set new 2014 record.

The Finke-less Deadline is now wondering if it might approach $100 mil!

This gibes with the amount of folks who turned out Thursday night at my local theater. I know that's purely anecdotal evidence, but it was a lot of people for my state at that hour of the day lol. If the kids turn out for matinees over the weekend it may indeed set that mark. I can still see it taking a major drop next weekend -- because this is a film built for Godzilla fans more than anyone else -- but they're poised to reap major dollars internationally as well as in the U.S.

Nikki Finke's twitter prediction was somewhere between $65-$77 million. Clearly she was way, way off on her estimation of this film (or at least her sources were). At one point yesterday she said "curiosity" was fueling grosses. Hey Nikki, how about the fact that Godzilla is one of cinema's legendary creatures and FINALLY has been put in a serious and entertaining modern film for all audiences to see? It's not THAT hard to figure.

The '98 film was doomed a bit from the start because the creature didn't even look or act like Godzilla...to say nothing of Broderick and the broadly comic characters in the film which immediately poisoned word of mouth. This movie has Godzilla looking like Godzilla, sounding like Godzilla, acting like Godzilla -- they got it right in other words. I think that has something to do with it!

The Finke-free Deadline is now saying that ASM2 is "played out", given how thoroughly it's been cooked by Godzilla and dissed by Neighbors. They are now pretty clearly saying it's going to be up to international grosses to get it the rest of the way to 755 million, which would only get it to break-even status. And given how it's played all over the world, with extremely bad word of mouth, I don't see it somehow raking in an additional 150+ million in China. I do see it in the unhappy position of Star Trek ID, where they didn't bomb but also didn't do the major business required to justify such an outlandish budget.

I agree that Sony's best course of action would be to seriously rethink their actions here. Could mean firing Mark Webb, maybe even recasting the leads again. Or it could justt the mean taking more time to craft a quality story that someone might want to see. And spending a greatly reduced budget so as not to put themselves in this situation again. In the simplest terms, Sony has to stop it with the monster budgets. You'd think they would have learned from last year's hijinks with After Earth and White House Down, but maybe they need further huge losses to finally get the message.

I also agree that the release dates of the Spider-man movies are driving the whole thing, and I'm betting that those are partly stemming from Sony's wish to retain their contractual right to make films with the character. At the least, this whole mess started with Sony insisting on making the first Webb/Garfield movie without taking any time to let the franchise rest after the Raimi era. What they should have said was "You know what, guys? We don't really have a good idea here and this doesn't serve the character well at all. Maybe our best course is to just let the character rights go back to Marvel and not waste our money and everyone's time on movies that could well kill all interest in this material." The comparison to what Joel Schumacher did with the already hollow Batman franchise in the 90s is quite apt. The result there was that they effectively killed any interest in movies about the character into the following decade, and after a rest, a better filmmaker was able to come up with a more interesting movie.

We'll have to see what Sony does next, just as we're seeing Paramount potentially tripping over their own feet with Star Trek and hiring Bob Orci to finish off Star Trek in the cinema for the foreseeable future. One can only hope neither Paramount nor Sony spends another 200 million plus on one of these things. And one can only wonder if it will take more bankruptcies of studios for these guys to learn their lesson.

Twitter tidbits on Spidey.

Intl growth keeps making up for US shortfalls on #SpiderMan2. $633M global heading to $750M or more w/ 72% from intl.

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN 2 swung past $600M+ this weekend--$172M domestic, $461M int'l, $633M worldwide.

ASM2 top markets: CHI ($78M) UK ($39M) KOR ($33M) MEX ($27M) JPN ($25M) BRZ ($21M) RUS ($20M) FRA ($20M)

Full numbers

GODZILLA had a 17% drop Sat. I would also anticipate a decent drop next weekend because it may be a bit frontloaded with the fanboys heading out in the first few days. Still a fantastic performance and way, way over projections.

MILLION DOLLAR ARM should've opened at a different time of the year. Terrible move by Disney releasing it in the midst of the blockbusters...never had a chance.

1 N Godzilla (2014) WB $93,205,000 - 3,952 - $23,584 $93,205,000 $160 1
2 1 Neighbors Uni. $25,991,000 -47.0% 3,311 +32 $7,850 $91,517,000 $18 2
3 2 The Amazing Spider-Man 2 Sony $16,800,000 -52.7% 3,991 -333 $4,209 $172,170,000 - 3
4 N Million Dollar Arm BV $10,511,000 - 3,019 - $3,482 $10,511,000 $25 1
5 3 The Other Woman (2014) Fox $6,300,000 -34.4% 3,054 -252 $2,063 $71,664,000 $40 4
6 4 Heaven is for Real TriS $4,400,000 -41.2% 2,893 -155 $1,521 $82,249,000 $12 5

7 6 Rio 2 Fox $3,800,000 -24.4% 2,371 -602 $1,603 $118,051,000 $103 6
8 5 Captain America: The Winter Soldier BV $3,759,000 -34.6% 2,271 -430 $1,655 $250,627,000 $170 7
9 8 Legends of Oz: Dorothy's Return CE $1,952,000 -47.9% 2,578 -80 $757 $6,559,000 - 2
10 7 Moms' Night Out TriS $1,900,000 -55.9% 1,046 +2 $1,816 $7,327,000 $5 2
11 9 Divergent LG/S $1,150,000 -34.0% 991 -242 $1,160 $146,775,000 $85 9
12 11 The Grand Budapest Hotel FoxS $1,100,000 -28.8% 630 -140 $1,746 $55,537,000 - 11

GODZILLA's budget was $160 mil according to sources. 75% of it was put up by Legendary, 25% by Warner Bros.

If they do a sequel, Warner Bros. would still get to distribute even though Legendary is now with Universal. Though Legendary, as was the case with this picture, is in full creative control and calls the shots.

http://www.iamrogue.com/news/interviews ... world.html

Looking at the international numbers, ASM2 is quickly slowing down overseas. In China, it dropped 75% from the opening weekend and it's played out in several other countries, including South Korea and the UK where it's been playing for a month already. Deadline is skeptical about whether it can get to the break even point. I think with these numbers it may well get to 665 or 675 before it peters out (pun only slightly intended), but that still means it will need to make up the rest in home video sales. We can only hope that Sony won't play games with the Blu-ray to try to artificially inflate their sales, as Paramount did last year with Star Trek ID. Their smartest option now is to really think about why they got so much bad word of mouth and how they can avoid making this mistake next time.