'Transformers' Tracking $160 Million+ in Five Days

Tuesday

02Jun2009

'Transformers' Tracking $160 Million+ in Five Days

Tuesday, June 2, 2009 at 5:46AM

I'm leery of box office tracking, particularly in the summer. It's not exactly the same thing we do when predicting the top five for a given weekend, which we do on Thursdays here at The Big Picture and which is mostly done by feel at this point. I'll give you an example: Most tracking numbers for Star Trek, taken a few days before it was released and before a lot of the public sneak previews, had a $65 million weekend, counting the Thursday night screenings. We said $81 million, and it made $79 million.

So why the discrepancy? Buzz. Star Trek had such strong word-of-mouth leading into that weekend, and the tracking numbers didn't and couldn't really take that into account. On the other hand, I felt that buzz the two times I saw the movie the week before it was released. That's not to say I'm never wrong, because I am, but tracking is probably incorrect just as often. Another example: Five days before The Incredible Hulk and The Happening were released last summer, the tracking was 10% high for Hulk and 33% low for The Happening. It's a crapshoot a lot of the time.

That brings us to the early tracking numbers for Transformers. Nikki Finke at Deadline Hollywood Daily has picked up the scent of rival studios predicting that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen will make between $160 and $175 million in five days. It's being released on a Wednesday, unopposed by any other film, and we already know that weekend will be big for it.

But is it too early to project that kind of weekend? I think if you're using it for official measurement, yeah. Because the highs are so high in summer, if a movie comes up short, it's by $20 million or something, which would never happen in October or March. And the big reason I feel that way about these numbers is that nobody has any idea what the finished product is like. This number is built on name recognition and the reaction to some clips and trailers.

But I think Transformers may have already peaked in the public consciousness. That happened when the second trailer was released a couple weeks ago. Star Trek kept building momentum, The Dark Knight kept building momentum, and the classic case in the past few years is Twilight. If you were to draw a chart, the momentum for Twilight hit its apex on opening day, and that's less common than you might think.

All I can tell you is I'm hearing more "Transformers looks stupid" comments now than I did a month ago. And we still have three weeks to go. I don't have any doubt that Transformers has the horses to make over $150 million in five days in a perfect scenario, but I do get the sense that as a marketing machine, it's kind of shot its wad, and that's a dangerous place to be this far out. By the way, that number would be about what the first movie made in seven days. Is this sequel as potent as Spider-Man 2, Revenge of the Sith, or Dead Man's Chest? They're all in the club, along with the out-of-reach Dark Knight.

If it's as disappointing as Wolverine and Terminator are, I think that number's just too high. This year, audiences aren't as accepting of junk, which is why Taken made roughly $45 million more than it would have a year ago; it was the only good movie out for two months. I'll see Transformers first before I make any specific prediction about its box office potential. If it's great fun, then $160 million is certainly a probability. If not, I'd aim a tad lower.

Colin Boyd |

Permalink | in

Box Office,

Transformers |

Print Article |

Email Article |

1 Comment |

Reader Comments (1)

Looks like Michael Bay will end up with the last laugh in his feud w/ McG.

Tuesday, June 2, 2009 |

mdamien13

Post a New Comment

Enter your information below to add a new comment.

My response is on my own website »

Author:

Author Email (optional):

Author URL (optional):

Post:

↓ | ↑

Some HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>