Ultimately, the story itself is pretty lackluster.
BUT, the visuals of the world, and really the world itself, are special and worth seeing in theater/3D. They are the impressive part, to me.

Decay said:

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TXAG 05 said:

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I wonder if Disney/Marvel would re-release Endgame, if anything just for some quick and easy money. I would think a lot more people would want to go back and see it on the big screen again.

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Could easily see all the avengers movies being a thing every few years.

The whole MCU has gotten to big to binge it all straight

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Disney used to rerelease all the animated classics, don't see why they wouldn't do it with the marvel movies. It's easy money.

Faustus said:

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Brian Earl Spilner said:

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If anyone's keeping score, that puts Avatar at $2.878 billion, adding to a now $80M lead on Endgame for #1.

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That's fan stuff. [/Dusty Baker]

We want to see the domestic cume.

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Nothing's touching The Force Awakens until we're all long dead. And adjusted is unlikely to change in the top 10 for the rest of time. (TFA only made it to #11.)

Domestic All Time:

• 1 - Star Wars: The Force Awakens - $936,662,225
• 2 - Avengers: Endgame - $858,373,000
• 3 - Spider-Man: No Way Home - $814,099,807
• 4 - Avatar - $771,037,201
• 5 - Top Gun: Maverick - $711,624,352

Domestic Adjusted:

• 1 - Gone with the Wind - $1,895,421,694
• 2 - Star Wars - $1,668,979,715
...
• 15 - Avatar - $911,790,952
• 16 - Avengers: Endgame - $892,669,593

I was just joking about the box office thread that only looks at domestic cumes, with a dash of Astros humor thrown in.

I prefer the worldwide box office when looking at the numbers. Sorry to put you to the effort!

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Nothing's touching The Force Awakens until we're all long dead. And adjusted is unlikely to change in the top 10 for the rest of time. (TFA only made it to #11.)

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Eh, I doubt that. It's been less than a decade and 2 movies have already come within a 100 mil give or take. Titanic appeared much more insurmountable during it's reign and it still took less than 20 years to dethrone. I'd be mildly surprised if TFA is #1 in ten years.

Adjusted is another matter - top 10 will definitely get cracked at some point but GWTW is probably safe. But I see adjusted gross like comparing baseball stats of today to a 100 years ago.

SJEAg said:

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Quote:

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Nothing's touching The Force Awakens until we're all long dead. And adjusted is unlikely to change in the top 10 for the rest of time. (TFA only made it to #11.)

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Eh, I doubt that. It's been less than a decade and 2 movies have already come within a 100 mil give or take. Titanic appeared much more insurmountable during it's reign and it still took less than 20 years to dethrone. I'd be mildly surprised if TFA is #1 in ten years.

Adjusted is another matter - top 10 will definitely get cracked at some point but GWTW is probably safe. But I see adjusted gross like comparing baseball stats of today to a 100 years ago.

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My question for you is which movie will do either of those? Cause if Endgame couldn't do it...

Brian Earl Spilner said:

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SJEAg said:

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Quote:

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Nothing's touching The Force Awakens until we're all long dead. And adjusted is unlikely to change in the top 10 for the rest of time. (TFA only made it to #11.)

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Eh, I doubt that. It's been less than a decade and 2 movies have already come within a 100 mil give or take. Titanic appeared much more insurmountable during it's reign and it still took less than 20 years to dethrone. I'd be mildly surprised if TFA is #1 in ten years.

Adjusted is another matter - top 10 will definitely get cracked at some point but GWTW is probably safe. But I see adjusted gross like comparing baseball stats of today to a 100 years ago.

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My question for you is which movie will do either of those? Cause if Endgame couldn't do it...

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No idea, but I am sure some phenomena will occur. How does TFA seem more unbeatable than Star Wars or Titanic in their day? Unadjusted, US population increase and inflation will certainly down it well within our lifetime.

SJEAg said:

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Brian Earl Spilner said:

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SJEAg said:

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Quote:

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Nothing's touching The Force Awakens until we're all long dead. And adjusted is unlikely to change in the top 10 for the rest of time. (TFA only made it to #11.)

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Eh, I doubt that. It's been less than a decade and 2 movies have already come within a 100 mil give or take. Titanic appeared much more insurmountable during it's reign and it still took less than 20 years to dethrone. I'd be mildly surprised if TFA is #1 in ten years.

Adjusted is another matter - top 10 will definitely get cracked at some point but GWTW is probably safe. But I see adjusted gross like comparing baseball stats of today to a 100 years ago.

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My question for you is which movie will do either of those? Cause if Endgame couldn't do it...

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No idea, but I am sure some phenomena will occur. How does TFA seem more unbeatable than Star Wars or Titanic in their day? Unadjusted, US population increase and inflation will certainly down it well within our lifetime.

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Also an odd question to ask what movie will break the record. if you knew that, you would be running a studio

I don't see it happening honestly.

But, a new #1 domestic is far more likely than anything cracking the adjusted top 10, that's for sure.

PatAg said:

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SJEAg said:

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Brian Earl Spilner said:

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SJEAg said:

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Quote:

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Nothing's touching The Force Awakens until we're all long dead. And adjusted is unlikely to change in the top 10 for the rest of time. (TFA only made it to #11.)

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Eh, I doubt that. It's been less than a decade and 2 movies have already come within a 100 mil give or take. Titanic appeared much more insurmountable during it's reign and it still took less than 20 years to dethrone. I'd be mildly surprised if TFA is #1 in ten years.

Adjusted is another matter - top 10 will definitely get cracked at some point but GWTW is probably safe. But I see adjusted gross like comparing baseball stats of today to a 100 years ago.

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My question for you is which movie will do either of those? Cause if Endgame couldn't do it...

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No idea, but I am sure some phenomena will occur. How does TFA seem more unbeatable than Star Wars or Titanic in their day? Unadjusted, US population increase and inflation will certainly down it well within our lifetime.

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Also an odd question to ask what movie will break the record. if you knew that, you would be running a studio

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No, you would be doing something much more than running a studio. You'd be freaking Nostradomus and you'd likely be running, oh, I don't know, the world.

Brian Earl Spilner said:

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SJEAg said:

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Quote:

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Nothing's touching The Force Awakens until we're all long dead. And adjusted is unlikely to change in the top 10 for the rest of time. (TFA only made it to #11.)

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Eh, I doubt that. It's been less than a decade and 2 movies have already come within a 100 mil give or take. Titanic appeared much more insurmountable during it's reign and it still took less than 20 years to dethrone. I'd be mildly surprised if TFA is #1 in ten years.

Adjusted is another matter - top 10 will definitely get cracked at some point but GWTW is probably safe. But I see adjusted gross like comparing baseball stats of today to a 100 years ago.

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My question for you is which movie will do either of those? Cause if Endgame couldn't do it...

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Never say never.

I like to think of movie box office numbers like a Galton board. Every time a movie drops, it's like a piece of sand or a bead dropping on the board. Initially, the distribution at the bottom is small, but over time it grows. What was initially an outlier may be enveloped by the distribution later as newer and more extreme outliers appear over time. You think anyone in the 20's or 30's ever thought a movie would have nearly a billion dollar domestic gross? With an infinitely sized board, the outliers would grow infinitely more extreme. However, the expected time between extremes being set would grow each time a new one was set. Even falling in the upper percentiles becomes harder. When movies were initially commercialized, I'm sure the top grossing movie of all time changed pretty frequently until the number got so high it got harder and harder to eclipse. We've probably hit a point where the most extreme outlier is very hard to beat, but that doesn't mean it can't or won't be. There will be a lot of movies over the next 30-50 years, and it is very possible that one of them takes #1.


Honestly, given enough of the right data, it could be estimated how long it should take by analysing the frequency distribution of box office totals and extrapolating from there. It's how they estimate the frequency of floods and earthquakes of various sizes. When they say a flood is a 500 year flood, it's not that they have a history of floods for an area to draw that from. They're using an extrapolated distribution to estimate frequency by size and the maximum given an arbitrarily long period of time.

What movie could have a wider appeal than the built in one that star wars did for the force awakens? Everyone alive has seen star wars and this was a sequel to the biggest trilogy of movies ever with the original cast back in it. Endgame demanded a lot of leg work to properly enjoy it but was phenomenal and still fell $78 million short. No way home and maverick followed the force awakens formula closer and neither came within $100 m

Honestly the only thing I could see doing it would be another Star Wars movie. The one that all the Disney+ series would build towards with a climactic showdown against Thrawn or what have you, bringing together Mando, Ahsoka, Luke, etc.

But even then, it would have a tough road at eclipsing TFA which had that appeal for older folks as well.

100-200m is nothing. If a movie performs like No Way Home or Endgame or Top Gun 2 in 20 years, it will be well over a billion domestic on inflation alone.

Adjusted arguments make some sense, unadjusted do not.

One that hasn't been thought of yet. The top grossing film has been eclipsed 11 times since 1915, with the longest stretch being 26 years after GWTW. Do you think anyone thought that Titanic, which took home 11 academy awards, would be eclipsed by a science fiction or super hero movie until it was?

ETA No one thought a science fiction movie from a guy who'd made 1 successful movie would beat out Jaws until it happened.

No one thought that a movie about some kids and a stranded alien would take down the Star Wars juggernaut until it happened

No one thought that a movie about dinosaurs would take down the iconic ET until it happened.

No one thought a 3 hour romance centered around the Titanic would dethrone Jurassic Park until it happened.

No one thought an environmentalist movie about blue aliens would dethrone Titanic until it happened.

No one thought a super hero movie would dethrone Avatar until it happened (Avatar retook #1 with a re-release)

No one thought _______ would unseat Avatar... Until it happened.

As for Avatar 2, even at my most optimistic outlook I don't think it can outdo Endgame. I think it would top out around $800M. (Again, that's BEST case scenario.)

However, worldwide I do think it at least has a shot at eclipsing Avatar for #1, mostly because China has grown exponentially as a market since 2009. Assuming no issues with the release (which I doubt there would be given the 2021 re-release and how much it made), I think $3B could be in play.

I completely agree about Avatar 2 domestic. I think there will be a significant amount of people who saw the first that won't see the second.

I took my kids to see DC League of Super Pets Monday and they showed the trailer for Avatar 2 first, then 3 trailers later, showed the re-release of Avatar trailer. It's one of the great parent-child oddities where they have no idea what something is and the effort to explain it to them seems insurmountable. (My explanation: It's on another planet and you can clone into an alien body as your avatar, and one guy decides to fight with the aliens against bad people).

On the way out we saw the poster for Bullet Train and my kids say, "Whos' that guy?" about Brad PItt. IT never gets old.

The winning formula is a dual narrative epic romance where the older version of the character is someone that every 35-40 year old woman has the hots for the younger version of the character is someone that every teenage girl is in love with so you get Titanic's repeat watching from both moms and daughters into infinity.

Great interview.

Avatar has now broken $2.9B.

Cinco Ranch Aggie said:

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PatAg said:

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SJEAg said:

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Brian Earl Spilner said:

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SJEAg said:

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Quote:

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Nothing's touching The Force Awakens until we're all long dead. And adjusted is unlikely to change in the top 10 for the rest of time. (TFA only made it to #11.)

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Eh, I doubt that. It's been less than a decade and 2 movies have already come within a 100 mil give or take. Titanic appeared much more insurmountable during it's reign and it still took less than 20 years to dethrone. I'd be mildly surprised if TFA is #1 in ten years.

Adjusted is another matter - top 10 will definitely get cracked at some point but GWTW is probably safe. But I see adjusted gross like comparing baseball stats of today to a 100 years ago.

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My question for you is which movie will do either of those? Cause if Endgame couldn't do it...

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No idea, but I am sure some phenomena will occur. How does TFA seem more unbeatable than Star Wars or Titanic in their day? Unadjusted, US population increase and inflation will certainly down it well within our lifetime.

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Also an odd question to ask what movie will break the record. if you knew that, you would be running a studio

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No, you would be doing something much more than running a studio. You'd be freaking Nostradomus and you'd likely be running, oh, I don't know, the world.

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Except you would know that by attempting to run the world, you would inevitably be murdered by someone.
Much safer to just run a major corporation

Brian Earl Spilner said:

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So they are ripping off Free Willy for this one?

I think the joke was pretty obvious.

Good read.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/25/movies/avatar-way-of-the-water-james-cameron.html

‘AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER’ final runtime is reportedly 3h10min.

(Via: https://t.co/hOpffPIt28) pic.twitter.com/yFkYbk413h

— The Hollywood Handle (@The_HollywoodH) October 28, 2022

3h 10m = Avatar: The Way of Water (12/16)
3h 08m = Babylon (12/23)
2h 41m = Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (11/11)

Looks like we're in for some long ass runtimes for the big movies this holiday season, something I'm not particularly excited about...

Trailer Wednesday morning.

That Neytiri face is my new reaction image.

Tomorrow the wait ends. New trailer for #AvatarTheWayOfWater debuts on @GMA. pic.twitter.com/met7oqxJ6U

— Avatar (@officialavatar) November 1, 2022

As expected, the visuals are amazing, but I'm starting to wonder why they're still insisting on being so vague about the plot. In other words, is it part of a the-movie-sells-itself strategy or is the plot too complicated/forced/lame to distill in a trailer?