THE GREATEST SHOWMAN : Box Office

[jo]

Here you are, hughmanity

The rest of the weekend contenders learned what it was like to lose, to feel so desperately that they're right, etc., etc., etc. While Avengers: Infinity War earned a record-smashing $250 million domestic debut, the rest of the competition took a hard dive. The only exceptions were Black Panther (Ha!) and, I s**t you not, The Greatest Showman ($90,000 for a 40% drop). I'm reasonably sure that The Greatest Showman is secretly a seventh Infinity Stone...

And to think that Showman is already on its 19th weekend --

www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=daily&id=greatestshowman.htm

...and now that it is moving out of the cinemas, it has replaced its ability to attract audiences (at the box office) by topping the Home Video sales market in the USA for two weeks in a row since its release last April 10. That was why it was one of the keynote themes at the CinemaCon, to remind theater exhibitors that strong word-of-mouth can strengthen box office hold after Opening Weekend.

And even there ( home video sales), there are tweets about multiple purchases of the BluRay/DVD for families ( haha - such as a Mom and Daughter wanting their individual copies, and even if they also downloaded the digital version). How does one explain the fascination, almost obsession, with this movie musical?

Jo

[jo]

As of May 6, 2018 --

Total Lifetime Grosses
Domestic: $173,789,109 (40.2%)
Foreign: $258,083,898 (59.8%)

Worldwide: $431,873,007

Screen count on the domestic side down to 123

[jo]

I should have posted this on this thread

May 13, 2018 5:16:14 GMT -5 jo said:

Deadpool calls THE GREATEST SHOWMAN as the "fabulous dancing monkey musical" and he is jealous that its box office results beat the first Deadpool movie.

wegotthiscovered.com/movies/deadpool-2-international-promo/




Psst: Mr. Deadpool 2 -- I have news for you : Japan is not too keen on superhero movies! They would rather watch Les Miserables ( $ 62.1 million) and The Greatest Showman ( $ 46.5 million). Black Panther couldn't do it either ($ 13.6 million). We'll see if Avengers:Infinity War can do it - it is currently at $ 23.4 million ( after 10 days)...even if it does, it has no way of beating Beauty and the Beast ( $ 110.8 million). In fact, it seems that at the moment, THE GREATEST SHOWMAN has the 3rd largest box office results for live-action musicals in Japan, followed by La La Land ($ 38.1 million), Mamma Mia! ($ 27.4 million), Chicago ( $ 27.4 million) and Into the Woods ($ 19.3 million).

Psst 2: Mr. Deadfool2, oops, Deadpool2 -- enjoy it while the FOX sun shines on R-rated superhero movies! Who knows how the studio that has built its name on family-friendlies will treat a movie like the Deadpool franchise once the Mouse House, aka Disney, moves in

[jo]

And maybe this was why Deadfool2 was practicing ANNIE's song



Oh, Ryan

Ok - we'll grant it to you : You're the LEAST GREATEST SHOWMAN


Jo

[jo]

May 14, 2018 4:59:17 GMT -5 jo said:

FUN FACT :


Per Box Office Mojo -- as of May 6, 2018

United Kingdom Box Office Receipts :


The Greatest Showman -- $ 63,362 Million ( still running in cinemas)

Les Miserables -- $ 63.201 Million

[jo]

As of May 17, 2018 ( except FOREIGN is updated only as of May 15, 2018)


Per Box Office Mojo --

Total Lifetime Grosses
Domestic: $173,913,007 (40.3%)
Foreign: $258,107,913 (59.7%)

Worldwide: $432,020,920

[jo]

LOL - I hadn't realized that there is still some updating from BOX OFFICE MOJO because the movie is still open in 21 theaters in the USA!

Total Lifetime Grosses

Domestic: $174,183,091 (40.1%) ( As of 6/24/18)

Foreign: $259,836,059 (59.9%) (As of 6/19/18)

Worldwide: $434,019,150

I am not sure if outdoor summer screenings will count, as there seem to be quite a number in the UK and maybe in the USA, too. Maybe not?


Jo

[hughmanity]

Just  an interesting tidbit-- with almost 200 days in release, and with far fewer theaters, THE GREATEST SHOWMAN  has actually outgrossed THE BLACK PANTHER the last couple of weeks at the domestic box office ( stats at boxofficemojo.com)

[jo]

Superhero movies tend to be front-loaded, with major drops in the second or the third week. Showman had one of the leggiest performances in the box office. But still it is only about a third of what Black Panther did worldwide and about a fourth for Domestic, if I am not mistaken. Box Office Mojo stopped reporting box office figures for the domestic side on June 14.

[hughmanity]

Of course I get all that and am not making a general comparison!  Give me some credit! LOL. It was just fun to say, at least for these last two weeks, that SHOWMAN outperformed PANTHER..  And while one can no longer find the grosses in the  BOM daily summaries, the weekend actual chart still reported the film's grosses and standings...at least for last weekend.

Jul 5, 2018 6:55:24 GMT -5 jo said:

Superhero movies tend to be front-loaded, with major drops in the second or the third week. Showman had one of the leggiest performances in the box office. But still it is only about a third of what Black Panther did worldwide and about a fourth for Domestic, if I am not mistaken. Box Office Mojo stopped reporting box office figures for the domestic side on June 14.

[jo]

I guess how I wrote it was not exactly how I intended it to sound. It does make us grin ( and grin widely) that The Greatest Showman defies all the odds - including beating BP on some level

And no matter how blockbuster movies do, it cannot take away the box office performance that THE GREATEST SHOWMAN showed the world … It made everyone in Hollywood sit up and it may have even hastened the greenlighting of other movie musicals.

Re the June 14 cutoff for reporting box office figures -- I've been wondering whether it meant that TGS is no longer showing on any domestic cinema?

Btw, I saw a tweet which said that there will be a summer open-air screening at NY Central Park -- can't locate the exact tweet. From the cinema to central park! It does make great sense that they screen it somewhere in the open air in Manhattan -- after all, that was where his circus-in-a-tent was first staged


Jo

[jo]

I wonder how much the combined total of the soundtrack album sales and the home video/digital releases will ultimately contribute to total revenues for THE GREATEST SHOWMAN ? Album sales was an area where The Greatest Showman beat Black Panther without doubt, so Bloomberg states

[jo]

It looks like THE GREATEST SHOWMAN was the top box office headliner in Japan for foreign films, too!


variety.com/2018/film/asia/hollywood-rare-japan-box-office-win-1202878016/

Excerpts --

Hollywood Enjoys Rare Dominance of Japan Box Office in First Half Year
By Mark Schilling

Bucking a decade-long box office trend toward local films, Hollywood dominated the Japanese movie-going in the first half of 2018. But the respite in the world’s number three theatrical market may not last.

The number one and two films for the January-June period, “Detective Conan: Zero the Enforcer” ($76 million) and “Doraemon the Movie: Nobita’s Treasure Island” ($47 million), were local and the new entries in long-running anime series. Counting the $34 million for number five “Shoplifters,” Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Palme-d’Or-winning family drama, Japanese films in the top ten earned a total of $157 million. That compares with the $209 million earned by the seven Hollywood films in the top ten.

Hollywood’s successes were an eclectic bunch. Fox’s “The Greatest Showman” beat any of the franchise titles, earning $48 million. “The Boss Baby” earned $30.7 million for Toho-Towa, making Japan the number two international result for the Fox comedy.

The top foreign distributor for the first half was Disney, which released number two “Coco” ($43 million) and number six “Avengers: Infinity War” ($32.5 million), the highest-earning Marvel comics movie and the only one in the top ten. Among Disney’s disappointments were “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” which took $15 million, and “Black Panther,” which could only manage $13 million.

More...

[jo]

Scott Mendelson of FORBES.com is back discussing further the "legginess" of THE GREATEST SHOWMAN, given its digital release/home video stats and its performance in key overseas markets --


www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2018/07/19/box-office-greatest-showman-legs-hugh-jackman-zendaya-zac-efron-mamma-mia/#74291080568a


Btw, no direct info has come out from Australia where the movie did strong sales at the box office and on home video/digital version.

[jo]

Technically-speaking, it only closed in theaters. It is still screening in various open-air screenings and in special events.

[jo]

Reposting from OFF-TOPIC ( Understanding the Movie Business) --

Jul 30, 2018 21:31:29 GMT -5 jo said:

Can the success of a movie trailer predict the eventual box office success of the film?

www.engadget.com/2018/07/29/fox-ai-predicts-movie-viewing-based-on-trailers/

Fox AI predicts a movie's audience based on its trailer
Get ready for an era where algorithms shape movie previews.

Jon Fingas, @jonfingas
23h ago in Personal Computing


Modern movie trailers are already cynical exercises in attention grabbing (such as the social media-friendly burst of imagery at the start of many clips), but they might be even more calculated in the future. Researchers at 20th Century Fox have produced a deep learning system that can predict who will be most likely to watch a movie based on its trailer. Thanks to training that linked hundreds of trailers to movie attendance records, the AI can draw a connection between visual elements in trailers (such as colors, faces, landscapes and lighting) and the performance of a film for certain demographics. A trailer with plenty of talking heads and warm colors may appeal to a different group than one with lots of bold colors and sweeping vistas.

Notably, the deep learning approach already appears to work in real world conditions. While Fox did use existing movies as a benchmark, it also had success anticipating the performance of future movies. Sure enough, the visual cues in a brand new movie trailer gave an idea as to what attendance would be like several months later.

There are flaws in this method. It doesn't capture temporal info (Fox uses an explosion after a car chase as an example), and it would ideally combine both the video and text descriptions to get a fuller sense of the story.

However, Fox isn't shy about the practical applications. The AI could help studios craft trailers they know will appeal to a movie's intended audience, whether they're casual moviegoers who stick to the blockbusters or aficionados who want something off the beaten path. You might well see trailers that play up specific imagery to increase the chances that you'll buy tickets. And that's important in the streaming era, where movie theaters have to compete for viewers who could easily stay home and watch something on Amazon or Netflix.

Maybe the predictive value is not yet truly established and the initial conclusions on the premature side?

Did FOX foresee correctly how the movie musical The Greatest Showman will perform at the box office?

FOX must have been actually very surprised with the box office performance of THE GREATEST SHOWMAN. Based on the 2 trailers where a fair of cynicism greeted them ( " Is this what Hugh Jackman gave up Wolverine for??"), there was no knowing how the movie will eventually end up at the box office. The massive publicity ( trailers, included) did not result in hoped-for opening weekend ( they were actually dismal!).

It was eventually the word-of-mouth...and the continuing word of mouth which lifted the movie musical to unexpected heights across all ages, gender, and borders. As Forbes.com likes to label it -- one of the leggiest performers at the box office ( think Titanic )! That can only be sustained by word of mouth-- not goodwill from the trailers! It also sustained a very long theatrical run ( 7 months!) which even passed the release date of the digital version ( end-March) and the home video disc versions ( April 10 for USA and early June for the UK) !

Jo

[jo]

The Greatest Showman made conventional wisdom go awfully wrong

Such as what James Mangold was quoted with

These are very recent quotes from James Mangold re the publicity and interest in LOGAN --


Mangold
Verified account
‏@mang0ld
@kakarrot4x The financial destiny of a film's release is determined in 1st week, thus no rational business entity will forgo trailers/tv etc

Not so, in the case of THE GREATEST SHOWMAN which stumped so many watchers of the movies scene! Defying all odds, not just with the movie but also with the soundtrack!

And, ironically, James Mangold was roped in by good friend/colleague Hugh Jackman to help in the critical post-production phase of GREATEST SHOWMAN, eventually getting Exec Producer's credit, an acknowledgement in the album sleeve of the soundtrack, and a rumored sumptuous paycheck?


Jo

[jo]

More records broken in the UK! Re downloads!

Film
The Greatest Showman sets new downloads record
By The Version
June 10, 2020

Smash hit musical film The Greatest Showman has, in the last two weeks, been verified as the first release to ever surpass 1,000,000 ‘Download & Keep’ digital transactions.

As of 9th June, the title sits at 1,014,000 total digital sales, 500,000 copies ahead of its nearest rival, the Queen bio-pic Bohemian Rhapsody. The hugely successful film starring Hugh Jackman has sold more than 3.1 million copies in total across disc and digital and is inspired by the story of P. T. Barnum’s creation of Barnum’s American Museum and the lives of its star attractions.

The Greatest Showman was the UK’s biggest home entertainment release of 2018, doubling the figure of the Number 2 film, Avengers: Infinity War, and has spent a whopping 78 weeks in the Official Film Chart Top 40.

Its motion picture cast recording is one of the longest-reigning Number 1 albums of all time, spending 28 non-consecutive weeks at Number 1 on the Official Albums Chart to match The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

There are some touches of irony here --

Many Hugh UK fans of the recent vintage were not aware of the talent who was performing live 8 shows a week in 1998-1999!
Not that much interest in Oklahoma! then

The Greatest Showman is an American showbiz story. The only link to the UK was then Jenny Lind travelled on the Queen Mary to go to NYC for her American tour.

But the UK fell in love with it... with the Jackman world tour cementing that love affair even more!

Jo

[jo]

After the relative box office failure of IN THE HEIGHTS on its opening weekend, so many reasons offered for the unexpected gloomy box office performance. Inevitably many hoped that it might the way of THE GREATEST SHOWMAN.

*IN THE HEIGHTS was a critics favorite
*Released at the start of the summer season (TGS was released in winter)
*Released versus minor box office champs ( TGS came in the wake of StarWars, in the same week as Jumanji with Dwayne Johnson and all those Oscar hopefuls needing a required theatrical release.

Why are they comparing ITH to TGS us beyond me -- the critics dumped TGS bigtime/movie press was not optimistic/Fox was giving more yearend support for Logan for Oscar glory ( as well as the latest Planet f the Apes/TGS used the musical score to tell the story and to paint portraits of the characters n in a big way)

Along these lines..

I have just come across a Deadline.com article that did a real post-mortem of the success of TGS --



deadline.com/2018/03/the-greatest-showman-crosses-400-million-global-box-office-fox-marketing-analysis-future-plans-1202353898/#comments
as it is

We may have already seen it ( but my memory cells refuse to agree!) -- but we may want to support  it again as we are now viewing as a gold standard of musicals. The irony is that TGS was never a film adaptation of an existing stage musical but an original movie musical. 

Jo

[jo]

The full article from Deadline.com --

This Is $400M+: ‘The Greatest Showman’ Hits WW Milestone On Feel-Good Legs

By Nancy Tartaglione

Nancy Tartaglione
International Box Office Editor/Senior Contributor

March 29, 2018 3:26pm

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20th Century Fox
When it comes to The Greatest Showman‘s theatrical business, it’s been a real sostenuto for 20th Century Fox and producer Chernin Entertainment after starting off on a low note at the Christmas box office.

Buried in the shadows of the behemoth holiday success of Star Wars: The Last Jedi ($1.3 billion global B.O.) and Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle ($943.7M) in addition to falling short of any electric awards season buzz, it seemed all was lost for the Hugh Jackman period musical about P.T. Barnum which opened to lackluster reviews and a dim $13.4M 5-day domestic debut.

However, Fox always had a sense based on the stellar female exit scores and the turnout by Broadway-philes that The Greatest Showman would ultimately be worthy of a standing ovation; a box office slow burn which in the U.S. and Canada played wide in north of 1,000 theaters for 11 weekends, 21 days longer than Last Jedi lasted at that threshold.


The latest high notes for this $84M budgeted musical? Last weekend The Greatest Showman hit $171.2M stateside, beating 2002 Oscar best picture winner Chicago ($170M) and becoming the third-highest grossing live-action musical of all-time after Beauty and the Beast ($504M) and Grease ($188.8M). Globally, it sang past the four-century mark with $407M becoming one of five big screen musicals to ever do so after Beauty and the Beast, Mamma Mia!, La La Land and Les Miserables.

For Fox, The Greatest Showman becomes their 4th highest-grossing title last year beating Kingsman: The Golden Circle ($410.9M). The movie has played and played with audiences leading singalong screenings and a soundtrack that won’t quit juiced by the Oscar-nominated anthem “This Is Me” from La La Land Oscar-winning songwriters Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. Deadline sources believe that the theatrical release will feasibly turn a $50M after global home entertainment TV streams, but soundtrack and music licensing rights are poised to drive that number to $100M (falling outside the top 10 in Deadline’s Most Valuable Blockbuster Tournament).

More importantly, at a time when Disney is pondering the fate of 20th Century Fox in its planned merger, the studio has more than proven its sustained worth in the older adult cinema sector, not just with the banner success of The Greatest Showman but in its six trophy Oscar run with Fox Searchlight earlier this month with titles The Shape of Water and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.



Overseas audiences, notably in the UK, Australia and Japan, continue to be tickled. In the UK, the movie bounced up to No. 1 in its 6th weekend of release after an IMAX component was added and held with small drops over the following weeks.

Given the response, discussions about how to keep the music playing are ongoing with musings of a Broadway transfer, an arena tour or a Las Vegas engagement being blue-skied.

The UK is its biggest offshore theatrical market with $55M through Tuesday, followed by Japan at $35M (which bowed February 16 and still has momentum) and Australia with $26M. (The one market that might have broken out but didn’t was China. It was a hot hub for La La Land last year but Showman just didn’t really find an audience there.)

Fox President of International Marketing Kieran Breen says, “It’s unusual to play so long from decent openings but not great. Very occasionally that happens with a Full Monty or Avatar. It says great things about the movie business that the audience dictates and is enjoying the film together. Those are the things you want to hear and see about movies.”

Fox President of International Theatrical Distribution Andrew Cripps marvels, “How many times do we run into the home entertainment date? That almost never happens.” Domestically, home ent kicks in at the end of this month and in the UK it’s April 10. Also in the UK, the soundtrack has been at No. 1 for 11 weeks, tying Adele’s 21 for the longest consecutive run at the top in 30 years (it’s likewise been No. 1 in almost every territory at some point, including on the domestic Billboard 200 and iTunes charts).

Here’s what some of the UK critics had to say about the movie: The Telegraph called it “completely and utterly bibbly bibbly quack-quack insane.” The Evening Standard said it was “a load of big top baloney.” The Guardian was kinder with “cheesy” but “charming.”

Producer Peter Chernin says critics tend to be “dismissive” of feel-good family fare. “We got smacked around a bit in reviews. A lot were like, ‘you sort of whitewashed the dark side of Barnum.’ It’s like, ‘Yeah, we did. We were trying to make a feel-good movie, not a muckraking exposé.’ They missed the point of what we were trying to do.”

Breen adds, “Even though the movie didn’t open as big as we originally hoped, in a lot of markets we have to credit the exhibitors for giving it the space and for allowing it to run on.” That allowed it to “find its audience and for the audience who decided they weren’t going to listen to the critics on this one.”

Chernin tells me, “We as an industry are under-serving the desire for audiences to feel good. We do a great job on spectacle, we’re good enough on intense dramas and comedies. But what we don’t tend to do a good enough job of is things that make people really feel great together.”

He suggests that the domestic opening was misinterpreted. “We almost started looking at it as paid sneaks. We held back a fair amount of our marketing for that weekend. The real opening was December 25. The week between Christmas and New Year’s is a huge opportunity for families who want to go to the movies together.” But, he allows, “We were nervous those days in between.”

Breen says it was a tough sell, but, “I don’t remember a movie that had such an evangelical following inside of Fox. Somehow the storytelling, the characters, the music and the Hugh of it all made it feel like we badly wanted it to succeed.”

To be sure, women drove business (in places like Japan and Korea, notably, they make the moviegoing decisions). Domestically at open, it counted a 73% female audience and an A CinemaScore. Awards-wise, with critics not warming to the pic (now at 55% Rotten), it sat out many races, and suddenly picked up three Golden Globe noms and an Oscar mention for Best Song.

But in-house passion for the pic was evident early on. At CineEurope in 2016, director Michael Gracey presented his vision through sketches and images during a half-hour walk-through that some at the time found indulgent. Fast forward a year and in June 2017, The Greatest Showman had the Barcelona crowd of European exhibs dancing in the aisles with Jackman telling them from the stage, “This is a film about taking risks and celebrating what makes each and every one of us different, special and unique.”

Having Jackman as frontman throughout the process clearly didn’t hurt. “We worked very close with him on social content,” says Breen. “He posted like crazy from everywhere he went, he was a real champion. This was a role he was born to play and he felt the responsibility of that.”

It “makes a big difference” to have a star so invested. “He attends marketing meetings from day one and comes up with ideas. He’s a creative guy who’s been in the business a long time and knows the value of touring, marketing, distribution and social.”

The combined social following of the movie’s talent that includes Hugh Jackman, Zendaya, and Zac Efron resonates with 185M followers. Fox’s marketing team worked with 18 core YouTube influencers from around the world with a combined following of 42M. Notably, they recorded their own versions of “This Is Me” at Abbey Road in London with Keala Settle and Jackman, among other activations.


Also globally, the “This Is Me” challenge involved a package containing video choreography, backing tracks, music sheets and more being sent to schools and theater groups who created their own interpretation.

Ways to keep the property going are being floated. Chernin says, “We’re doing a lot of work right now thinking about what are the next potential opportunities, talking to Hugh and Michael and Benji and Justin. It could be Broadway to Vegas to an arena tour. It’s clearly struck a chord so what’s the most fitting for the material.”

Would Jackman be involved in any future iterations? “Clearly Hugh is not going to spend the next ten years on an arena tour,” Chernin laughs. But, “one of the great things is that it is so overwhelmingly emotional for everyone who worked on it. Hugh has been so moved by the audience response.”


For now, the singalongs continue with Japan getting in on the gig from this weekend. Fox will be opportunistic in the future and may bring the singalongs back to theaters after the DVD release across various markets. “Every so often,” hints Breen, “you’ll find a Moulin Rouge on somewhere in the UK.”

He continues, “We had big religion on this even though it was a hard sell. But give us a big problem and we’ll find a solution. From the opening I was kind of gutted, so I’m just really happy to see it get its moment and the audience rally to it. In this time when the world is a tough place and people are uncertain and worried about where it’s going, this offers a very optimistic and uplifting, almost cathartic, response to some of the crap that’s going on.”