Remember how many movies TPM outlasted at the box office?

[flagg]

I thought this might be a nice trip down memory lane. All of the movies below were released in the 20 weeks after May 19, 1999 and opened above TPM. But like a Timex, TPM kept on ticking and eventually passed them all. Next to the movie’s title is the number of weeks TPM took to pass that film.

Austin Powers:TSWSM (3)
Tarzan (6)
The General’s Daughter (4)
Big Daddy (6)
Wild Wild West (4)
South Park (1)
American Pie (10)
Arlington Road (1)
Eyes Wide Shut (3)
Lake Placid (2)
The Wood (2)
The Haunting (5)
Inspector Gadget (8)
Runaway Bride (11)
The Blair Witch Project (10)
Deep Blue Sea (7)
The Thomas Crown Affair (8)
Mystery Men (4)
The Iron Giant (4)
Bowfinger (6)
Brokedown Palace (2)
Detroit Rock City (1)
Mickey Blue Eyes (5)
Universal Soldier: The Return (2)
Teaching Mrs. Tingle (2)
The 13th Warrior (4)
In too Deep (3)
The Astronaut’s Wife (2)
The Muse (3)
Dudley Do-Right (3)
Chill Factor (2)
Outside Providence (2)
Love Stinks (1)
Jakob the Liar (2)
Stir of Echoes (5)
Total: 35

Pretty impressive huh? TPM outlasted nearly every other film that summer. The Sixth Sense was the only one it didn’t catch up to. TPM’s eleventh week was particularly impressive as it managed to leapfrog over four films (Tarzan, Lake Placid, The Wood and WWW) to stay in the top 10! It’s just a shame AOTC couldn’t recapture those phenomenal legs.
Here are the films that AOTC has overtaken since it got knocked off the top spot by Sum of All Fears:

Ya Ya Sisterhood (for one week only, then Ya Ya passed AOTC again – what’s up with that?)
Windtalkers
Juwanna Mann
Hey Arnold!

If AOTC hadn’t lost so many theaters so quickly, I think it could have held on better. It’s a vicious circle, really.
:mad

[JMK]

I think that may be the greatest indicator of TPM's phenomenal summer. There are alot of big movie in there that TPM just blew out of the water...it really is too bad that AotC isn't following in its footsteps.

[CMJ]

It was a really amazing run. One of the most impressive I've seen.

[JonathanLB]

It was a lot of fun watching that!

Unfortunately this thread is painful because it makes me realize how badly I want my book on TPM to be published. It is such a good book, grrr... Such an interesting story that deserves telling, so I had better have some luck with it eventually. I'm still doing my AOTC book... haven't done a lot on it yet, but I think some editors may be more likely to publish it because I got a few rejections where it seemed as though the editor was just not interested because he/she didn't like TPM. Perhaps they will be more favorable to AOTC, hard to know.

AOTC has still outlasted a lot more movies than just the few you listed though if you include ones that opened after AOTC and failed to earn as much money even though AOTC had been playing longer. I still think that is a good indication. Then again, I realize that's not what we did for TPM.

Maybe for Episode III we will see an incredible run as far as staying power. I dunno, but here's hoping.

[FLMKR4EB]

Lets all Harken back to the days of Empire. ANH made the most of any Star Wars movie, second most all time. Empire made a lot as well, but not even close to as much as ANH, then ROTJ came in and made a bundle. I think we'll see that happen again.

[JonathanLB]

I hope you are right! That'd be great...

Well, at my local theater, AOTC has done a lot better than it has in national release.

In fact, I'd be fairly willing to bet, oh, $50 that AOTC has outgrossed TPM at Evergreen. First, it started on 3 screens, not 2 like TPM, and it had 2 midnight showings, not 1 like TPM, and it has been more full, in general, than I saw TPM here. Another theater, Movies on TV, apparently did much better with TPM as they kept it for 22 weeks, but AOTC is probably creaming TPM here.

Ya-Ya Sisterhood already was booted from Evergreen effective this Friday, but AOTC remains, yet it opened much earlier. Which movie is doing better? The answer is obvious. At least, at Evergreen. I am quite happy with how well it has done there. I just realized why the moved it from auditorium 5 to 3 the other day; 3 is much bigger! So they moved Hey Arnold, which I could tell was not attracting hardly anyone, into the smaller theater and AOTC back into a bigger one to eliminate the possibility of a sold-out showing as happened about 10 days ago.

I guess it just depends on the area whether or not AOTC is doing as well as other movies in release, as well as TPM, etc. I think Evergreen is likely doing really well with AOTC compared to TPM in profit because I believe the terms were stricter on TPM than they were for AOTC. My evidence being that theaters were required to keep TPM for 12 weeks, or 8 weeks, depending on their market size, but AOTC was 4 weeks everywhere.

[flagg]

I thought I should up this in light of the fact that AOTC jumped ahead of Ya Ya and Sum of all Fears this weekend. The legs are finally kicking in!
Shame it's so late in the run :(

[JMK]

Yeah, but better now than not at all, right? We still might see another Christmas charity re-release like TPM got, but given that TPM did not do that well that weekend, maybe not. I think TPM made somewhere in the 2 million range for that weekend, no?

[Jedieb]

That's a great list flagg. I'd love to see similiar lists for the OT. I bet ANH would have the longest by FAR. ESB & ROTJ both ran into the following year so I'm sure their lists would be quite long as well.

[JonathanLB]

Actually ANH would have a short list dude.

That list for TPM was movies that OPENED with more money than TPM and then in a later weekend actually earned less. That happened with TPM because it had great staying power, but lots of competition.

With ANH, I read in The Oregonian a few years back, the movie actually stayed at #1 for 19 straight weeks at the box office, then it came back and was on top for a total of about 22 weeks, which is far longer than Titanic. Although Titanic is considered the modern champion of that particular statistic, uhh, ANH did far better than that -- and in the middle of the summer, and the later part of the summer, and into the fall!

ANH was never defeated during that summer so ZERO movies opened above it. Now of course, if you made a list of films that opened later than ANH and left theaters earlier, haha, that'd be pretty darn big.

The TPM charity re-release made $2.1 million, which was quite good given the 750 theaters roughly. I mean, really quite respectable, but I saw some ABSURD predictions. I think my own prediction was $10 million for the entire 7 days, and I was way off percentage wise. I wasn't *that* far off, though, not embarrasingly so. I saw a professional analyst with like the WSJ saying that it could "add as much as $30 to $40 million." I was thinking, "WHAT is this guy smoking?!?! Everyone and their mother has seen this movie, it ain't adding $30M in 7 days, lol." What a fool.

[JonathanLB]

To be fair, EB is quite right that in the later stages of ANH's release, like late fall and winter, ANH probably outlasted a buttload of movies, after it had fallen from #1 at the weekly box office.

[JMK]

I guess with only 2.1M in a charity release, we may not be seeing AotC in theaters at Christmas. But what the hell? It's charity! Open the purse strings uncle George, pay for the marketing and give it back for a week!

Of course, given that the DVD & VHS will be out, I don't know if the wish will be granted. :\

[Jedieb]

ANH was never defeated during that summer so ZERO movies opened above it. Now of course, if you made a list of films that opened later than ANH and left theaters earlier, haha, that'd be pretty darn big.

ANH premiered at #2, behind Smokey and the Bandit. so it wasn't undefeated. ;) But to be fair, it only opened in a few dozen theaters. So Jon's right, from a certain point of view. But once summer was over and ANH was still going strong the list probably started to grow as fall and winter releases came and went. Then another spring, then another summer....

[JonathanLB]

That is what I meant, EB, hehe, I know Smokey and the Bandit was actually a big deal that summer. As I recall, ANH outgrossed it by about four times when all was said and done (cliche, hehe).

And, yeah, ANH opened in 2nd. That's... very weird. How could it even open in 2nd with like 24 theaters?! LOL. That is absolutely impossible now. I suppose a movie could generate even up to $3 million playing in that few theaters, but in any time of the year, that would barely crack the top 10, possibly #9 or #8 in a slow season.

ANH sure was weird, hehe, a more unbelieveable success story than either Gone With the Wind or Titanic. I think that is fair to say because GWTW was based on what is considered one of the greatest books of our time and it was a highly anticipated movie (the most anticipated ever, most people would say, before TPM came out). Then Titanic was the most expensive movie ever made. ANH was neither. It was a fairly low budget (but overbudget) sci-fi movie, a genre that wasn't considered commercially viable, that Fox nearly sold off before it even hit theaters, and with mostly unknown actors and a ton of weird names and all kinds of things that had never even been tried before. Sure worked, though! :)

Now about 25 years and $10 BILLION later, it seems like a pretty good idea. :D

[Jedieb]

I don't know why, but the number 48 keeps popping up in my head when I think of the number of theaters ANH premiered in. I've seen the numbers before, but I can't find them now. I think it was only a couple of million behind Smokey and the Bandit.

[imported_QuiGonJ]

I just keep hoping some films will fail and they will put AOTC back in, but that seems unlikely at this point.

However, AOTC will be released in IMAX in September in a number of cities, so that might help it a bit.

Oh, and according to Steve Sansweet at the event CMJ and I went to a week ago Sunday, that number was 32 screens for ANH's opening. :)

[Darth23]

AOTC movied ahead of Sum of All Fears, Windtalkers, Ya- Ya Sisterhood & Juwanna Mann.

Scooby Doo could be next.

[JMK]

Where did you hear about the IMAX Qui Gon??

[imported_QuiGonJ]

http://www.coruscantcity.net/cgi-bin/board/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=21;t=000377

;)

Fine site, that CCnet, you get all sorts of good info there. :D