STUDIO 666 opening | Industry tracking and box office estimates in December 2021 | February 25 to 27, 2022 weekend
Opening weekend box office figures, charts and commentary
The current weekend: February 25 to 27, 2022
1) Studio 666 opening
- This is a weak opening. Studio 666 is an original oddity: a horror-comedy-music-fantasy-reality mash-up built around Dave Grohl’s and the Foo Fighters band's popularity. There aren't many horror comedies in general (only Scary Movie grew into an extended series), and there haven't been any like this — this is a one-off.
- The weekend after President's Day is usually quiet, but not this quiet. There is enough room for a new big studio movie in late February, even with Batman arriving next weekend, but it didn’t happen:
2) Industry tracking and opening weekend estimates
- There were 10 wide releases in December. Nine of them were covered by the research tracking services that work in the movie business. Averaging the tracking services' estimates for each film's opening weekend (as measured just before opening), the estimates in December were off by this much:
- All of the tracking services employ accomplished statisticians, applied mathematicians, and computer scientists. They come with PhDs from the best universities to try their hand at these estimates. The talent pool is based all over the world — in New York, Boston, the Bay Area, London, and Israel.
- Since the early/mid-'80s, when the first tracking study was established, every innovative methodological idea on the planet has been explored. Social media metrics have been added. Questions focusing on seeing a movie in a theater this weekend have been added. Better research samples. Algorithms, machine learning, artificial intelligence.
- Tracking provides an important measure of awareness and interest in a movie — that’s what it was designed to do. Awareness and interest levels are a good gauge of the effectiveness of a marketing campaign, and the demographic insights are helpful. But the conversation will always turn to, "...so, how much is the movie going to make?" Some weekends, the estimates are better than others. In December, based on 37 years of experience, they were off by +/- 42.76%.