Will Any Movie Open Above $50 Million This Season?

Captain Marvel 2, reportedly the season's most anticipated film, opened earlier this month to just $47 million domestically--and then proved to have been very front-loaded indeed (falling 78 percent in its second weekend). The Hunger Games prequel, Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, in spite of some comparative optimism about its prospects, opened to a little less, while Boxoffice Pro projected an opening of $25-$35 million for Wonka, and $50 million is likewise well ahead of what either of this week's big releases, Napoleon or Wish, is expected to make in its first three days (even if Wish might get past that over the fuller five day weekend).

All of this seemed to leave Aquaman 2 (coming out Christmas week) Hollywood's last shot at a really big hit this season--but we have just learned that $50 million is well above even the high end of the range projected for its opening by the folks at Boxoffice Pro. The result is that I have no expectation of any movie opening before New Year's Day debuting to that much--and this holiday season, just like the first half of the summer season, coming off looking week next to their counterparts in 2022, underlining just how far Hollywood still remains from its pre-pandemic performance--all as 2024, with a release slate much like 2023's but weakened by the disruption of the year's strikes, promises the box office little relief.

Aquaman 2: Boxoffice Pro Posts its First Long-Range Forecast for the Film's Domestic Gross

Considering Aquaman 2 (aka Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom) I did wonder if the movie would not defy the trend of franchise failure. After all, the first Aquaman film was relatively well-received, this only the second film in the sequence (in contrast with characters of which the public had had time to grow more weary), and the trailer looked very credible (certainly a lot more exciting than the one for Captain Marvel 2). Still, the pattern of failure has been fairly consistent (underlined even by the only comparative success of Guardians of the Galaxy 3), the always more vulnerable DC Extended Universe has done very badly indeed this year (with Shazam 2, Blue Beetle and of course The Flash), while the fact that the DCEU is not so much building to a triumphant climax as being handled like a canceled TV show "burning off" its last unaired episodes. The result is that I tried not to be overly negative, but all the same, taking up the subject back in July it seemed to me necessary to allow for a scenario of collapse at the box office in which the film fell short of not just the billion-dollar barrier the first such movie broke, but $400 million globally.

Now Boxoffice Pro (just as it did with Captain Marvel 2 back in October) is affirming the anticipation of collapse with the publication of its first tracking data-based long-range forecast for the film, specifically an opening weekend take in the range of $32-$42 million (versus The Flash's $55 million and Captain Marvel 2's $47 million), and a domestic total range of $105-$168 million (such that at the low end it could take in less than The Flash). Compared with the first film the total gross would be about 60 to 75 percent less than the movie made in real terms ($335 million in 2018-2019, equaling $410 million in today's terms), a drop comparable to what Captain Marvel 2 suffered in comparison with the first Captain Marvel film.

Such figures make a very considerable worldwide multiplier necessary to turn a domestic performance like this one into a respectable, break even-approaching earner, and alas, in contrast with that other series that Aquaman star Jason Momoa appeared in this year, Fast and Furious, this series has little such hope. Fast X made four times its domestic gross internationally ($559 million to its $146 million in North America)--but superhero movies, a particularly American passion, tend not to do so well internationally, with the first Aquaman, which made about two-and-a-half times what it did domestically abroad, as good as it gets. Moreover, one should note that this was overwhelmingly due to a very strong response from China, which is very unlikely to be forthcoming this time given the reception of more recent American films there. The result is that Aquaman 2 would be doing well to make three times its domestic gross globally, which in even the most positive current scenario detailed by Boxoffice Pro would leave it a half billion at best, as much worse becomes imaginable (such that it could end up with a lot less than $400 million).

Of course, there is still a month to go before that movie actually hits theaters--but as The Flash and Captain Marvel 2 both showed, the movie's prospects could decay rather than improve, while, even if the faintness of the competition this year should seem a point in the movie's favor, it by no means guarantees its "cleaning up." The way the box office works these days the lack of appetizing alternatives on the menu does not mean that others will order up this one--and so for now the safest guess would seem to be the DCEU's last movie concluding the franchise's run with a whimper rather than a roar of triumph, with all that implies for the fantasy of a mighty new DCEU finally satisfying the WBD's longstanding Marvel envy, to say nothing of the superhero film, the franchise film, the blockbuster as we know it more broadly and the fate of a Hollywood which, battered by events beyond its control (like the pandemic, and the geopolitical turn hurting it in China) has also inflicted plenty of wounds on itself--while showing not the least sign of behaving more intelligently in the years ahead.

Captain Marvel 2 is Actually Doing Worse Than The Flash

Initially considering Captain Marvel 2 I treated it as a regular Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) release in a time of declining prospects for Marvel (with its sequels making 20-50 percent less than their predecessors in the same series), and calculated on that basis a likely gross of $600-$700 million for the film back in May. Many franchise flops and a disappointing promotional campaign later I suggested the movie would be the Marvel Cinematic Universe's equivalent of the debacle that The Flash has been for the DC Extended Universe (DCEU), with, of course, this promptly affirmed by the tracking data-based projections from the folks at Boxoffice Pro.

So far, however, Captain Marvel 2 has actually done worse than The Flash. The Flash had a bigger opening weekend ($55 million to Captain Marvel 2's $47 million five months later), and had a better first-to-second weekend hold (falling just 73 percent, as against 78 percent in Captain Marvel 2's case) that left it with one-third more money grossed ten days into its run ($88 million to Captain Marvel 2's $65 million). Moreover, Thanksgiving weekend is not expected to narrow the gap by much. Even with Boxoffice Pro anticipating a relatively mild second-to-third weekend drop of 33 percent for The Marvels, this still works out to $77 million for Captain Marvel 2 on Sunday, against the $99 million The Flash had at the same point in its run. That enabled The Flash to break the $100 million barrier the next day--whereas that barrier seems likely to remain well outside Captain Marvel 2's reach.

Moreover, the numbers are only part of the story. In comparing the two films it is worth noting that given the state of the DCEU the release of The Flash was, from the franchise standpoint, comparable to the airing of the last episodes of a TV series canceled for low ratings after being given many, many chances to do better--in contrast with a Marvel Cinematic Universe that, if far from its Phase Three peak, recently looked as robust as any franchise around, with Guardians of the Galaxy 3's reception, if not all that could have been hoped for, implying some life still left in it (the weak opening weekend compensated for by good holds suggestive of a real measure of welcome), and even raising hopes that a bit of the associated good will would translate over to the next MCU release. One may add that Captain Marvel 2 did not suffer anything like the scandal that hung over The Flash on account of the personal life of its star. The result is that its weaker performance occurred without quite so many of the liabilities that The Flash bore, bespeaking the public's either becoming much more sour on the kind of film this is in the past few months, a much stronger rejection of this particular movie on the basis of the kind of movie it seems to be (the goofier approach, etc.), or both.

Captain Marvel 2 Flies into its Third Weekend

With Napoleon and Wish coming out these are naturally the focus of the commentary of box office-watchers--but let us also not forget the major releases of prior weeks, like Captain Marvel 2. Thus far underperforming very, very badly (with a mere $65 million taken in its first ten days it was running about one-fourth behind The Flash and tending to slip) one may wonder if the holiday weekend will not provide the film some relief.*

As it happens, Boxoffice Pro projects the movie collecting another $12 million over the week, likely helped by the holiday weekend.

Of course, past projections for the film have proven overoptimistic (as with last weekend's)--and so could this one. Yet the fact remains that the film does not have much way to fall, while the competition this weekend (given what we are hearing about the expectations for Napoleon and Wish, and holdovers like the Hunger Games prequel and Trolls 3) does not seem overwhelming. Rather the problem is that the film could do a good deal better than that and still have a very long way to go before rising above the "flop" status the press has accorded it.

* At the same point in its run The Flash, which had opened bigger and had a better first-to-second weekend hold had $88 million grossed domestically (one-third more than Captain Marvel 2).

Wish Hits Theaters: What Can We Expect?

This Thanksgiving weekend sees two big new movies hitting theaters. One is Ridley Scott's Napoleon. The other is Disney's Wish.

An "event" film marking the 100th anniversary of the Disney studio and its tradition of animated filmmaking, one might ordinarily expect the film to be a massive hit--but the picture we got a month ago was more ambiguous. And the range has slipped. Where even a week ago Boxoffice Pro suggested a range of $40-$60 million for the 3-day weekend, and $57-$87 million for the 5-day, now their range has $44 million as good as it gets for the 3-day period ($35-44 million), $66 million as good as it gets for the 5-day ($49-$66 million). The floor has not dropped much, but the ceiling has, with all that implies for the prospects of a near-$300 million gross that Boxoffice Pro has raised, and continued to entertain in its longer-range estimates down to last week. Good holds might partially compensate for this, but these are of course no sure thing--the more in as the critics have not been kind to this one. (Their score on Rotten Tomatoes is just 51 percent.)

Still, it is now the audience's turn to judge the movie for itself, and we will see what they decide in the weeks ahead.

"Can Napoleon Be Another Oppenheimer?": A Follow-Up

As I remarked in a post last month seeing the ads for Napoleon I found myself thinking of Oppenheimer--both films being biographical epics about major historical figures, a genre not known to do too well at the American box office. Oppenheimer surprised everyone on that score--and I wondered whether Napoleon might not do the same.

I saw two reasons to doubt it right away--namely that whereas Napoleon helmer Ridley Scott is a respected, veteran, director, he has no cheering section out there ready to praise to the skies anything he does the way Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan does, which probably did a lot to help sell the movie; while if the story of Napoleon and the events of his time have undeniable meaning for the world today, there seemed little playing up of any such "relevance" in the media next to the way they compared the advent of the nuclear age to the unhinged hyping of text-spitting chatbots when talking about Nolan's film.

As it happened, the Boxoffice Pro projections for the movie, in spite of fluctuations over the past month, remain pretty much where they were four weeks ago (with a 3-day opening in the vicinity of $16-$21 merely risen to one of $17-$23 million, and even the high end of the range projected for the film's overall run still in the $70-$80 million range). Meanwhile critics are not exactly gushing about the movie, the film's Rotten Tomatoes score a mere 68 percent. By contrast the projection for Oppenheimer, reflecting the tracking data, surged some 30 percent in the month before release, from $40-$55 million to $52-$72 million in the opening weekend alone--a feat the more impressive because it came out the same weekend as the even more performing #1 hit of the year, Barbie--while critical enthusiasm was such as to produce a 93 percent score (with some of that praise won in surprising places, I might add).

Of course, with the film only coming out now it has some room to surprise us--but that room is dwindling fast, domestically at least. (The international markets, traditionally more receptive to historical films like this one, may be another matter.)

Captain Marvel 2's Second Weekend in North American Release: How Did it Go?

Back in May I speculated that The Marvels, based on the emergent pattern of Marvel Cinematic Universe sequels each making 20 to 50 percent less in real terms than the preceding film in their series (and the particularly close parallel with Black Panther 2), would gross some $600-$700 million global. After a summer of shocking franchise flops that could not simply be blamed on anything but audience disinterest (given how well other movies like Barbie were doing in the same season), and the poor impression that the film's pre-release publicity seemed to be making on the public, this seemed like it could be optimistic--and in early October the tracking data confirmed it. On the basis of that added information I revised my estimate for the global gross down to $250-$500 million--and then after another month of signs pointing to an even weaker performance than had seemed likely in early October, ended up wondering if even $250 million would not be overoptimistic, with this possibility hardly seeming less plausible after the actual opening weekend (which saw it take in just $47 million in North America).

Of course, I did suggest that hit movies, even when they were big movies like this one, may have been growing less front-loaded than before, and that good holds might partially compensate for the film's weak opening (as they did for the last MCU movie Guardians of the Galaxy 3, and even more for that flop-turned-hit Elemental). Alas, the expectations for the second weekend were a far cry from that (Boxoffice Pro projecting a hard 65 percent drop, versus the 48 percent decline Guardians had) while the reality seems to have been worse--a fall of 78 percent, leaving the film with just $10 million grossed this weekend and $65 million in total.

By contrast even The Flash had not just opened bigger, but had a better first-to-second weekend hold ($55 million versus Captain Marvel 2's $47 million on the opening weekend, and a 73 percent), leaving it one-third ahead at the same point in its run (with just under $88 million after ten days, as against Captain Marvel 2's $65 million).

The Flash, of course, failed even to double its opening weekend gross, on the way to barely breaking past the $100 million mark domestically ($108 million). Captain Marvel 2, opening weaker and fading faster, would seem set to do worse, and thus fall short of the $100 million mark--and maybe even below the low end of the much-reduced domestic range I suggested earlier ($85-$125 million, versus the $100 million I thought was as low as it could go back in early October).

Of course, we do have a holiday weekend coming up--and again, the competition over the weeks ahead does not exactly look fierce. (The Hunger Games sequel opened this weekend to even less than Captain Marvel 2 had last week, just $44 million, near the bottom of the range predicted for it.) Still, even if I think it safest to watch how the film does next weekend before writing it off as a failure, it is undeniable that its chances of overcoming the weak opener, probably always slight to begin with, just keep on getting slighter.

"I Don't Wanna Hear About No Superhero Fatigue!"

There are times when the entertainment media seems to represent movies as bigger successes than they are--grading box office performance on a curve.

This does not seem to have been the case with Captain Marvel 2, the press--which had loudly anticipated a flop before the film's release--calling the film a flop after that first weekend in release (and still more, the second).

However, those "analyses" of the film's performance I have encountered seem to be doing so as part of a particular game--emphasizing that yes, this particular superhero movie is a flop, but one should not draw any wider conclusions from that. Chalk this one up as a misfire suggestive of nothing more than slightly better management over at Marvel could easily fix--not superhero fatigue.

Yet consider the undeniable pattern since the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)'s Phase Three wrapped up back in 2019. Of the MCU movies released since only one really went "above and beyond" at the box office--Spider-Man in December 2021. Of course, one could reasonably chalk up the lackluster performance of its three predecessors (Black Widow, Eternals, Shang-Chi) to the effect of the pandemic and the associated experimentation with streaming (and at the global level, Marvel's shutout from the Chinese market, even if in fairness Marvel should have understood what it was getting into there), but it was also the case that Dr. Strange 2 looked like an underperformer given how well the Spider-Man film it was tied in with had just done, and the fainter than usual competition that season. And everything since has been unambiguously less successful, with the four next MCU sequels (Thor 4, Black Panther 2, Ant-Man 3, Guardians of the Galaxy 3), when the grosses are adjusted for inflation, down 20 to 50 percent from the grosses of the preceding films in their series'. Now Captain Marvel 2 seems almost certain to do worse than that. (Going by my estimates its gross could end up 80 percent down from what the first Captain Marvel made.)

And of course, what has been bad for the MCU has been worse for its principal rival, the DC Extended Universe, which saw Black Adam get a weak reception (failing to crack $400 million global), Shazam 2 make the third-stringer performance of the first Shazam look like boffo b.o. by comparison, and The Flash . . . well, it was pretty shocking back in June, though now we are used to such performances.

This seems to me like a pretty consistent pattern of weak performances by such films--the more in as, in contrast with the 2020-2021 period other movies are becoming really vast successes (as The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Barbie did, for example).

Considering all that my only objection to talk of superhero fatigue is that it understates the problem when we look at a year in which along with the declining grosses of the superhero films Fast and Furious, Transformers, Indiana Jones and Mission: Impossible also suffered. Superhero fatigue is really a subset of a wider franchise fatigue and action movie fatigue and blockbuster fatigue, which fatigue for the moment shows no sign of abating--while being a thing Hollywood, and the claqueurs of the entertainment press, can still less afford to admit given how much more deeply threatening it is to the model by which they have made so much money for so long, and for which the increasingly battered studios have absolutely no substitute at hand as they try to keep themselves afloat.

Do Computer Programmers (and Programming) Get Disproportionate Attention in Discussion of the Labor Market?

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) in May 2022 the U.S. had some 133,000 computer programmers at work.

This is out of some 158.3 million employed people that very month--which means that computer programmers comprise a mere 0.084 percent of total American employment, fewer than one in eleven hundred of those persons employed in this country actually a "computer programmer."

One would never guess that from the sheer amount of time spent talking about coders and coding.

Of course, computer programmers are just one of a wider range of jobs in the computer field (with some of which programmers may be synonymous in the minds of those not too meticulous in their use of the terminology). Still, as the BLS statistics show, the full range of computer science-related jobs comes to some 5 million nationally--with this, again, working out to not much more than 3 percent of the work force.

Again it is a rather smaller proportion of the work force than one would suppose from the time spent gabbing about them, to say nothing of such fashionable nonsense as coding being the "new literacy"--or the notion that people losing their other jobs could, in line with the inane sneer of the conventional wisdom-abiding, simply "learn to code," precisely because it is inconceivable that there would be enough work to go around for all of them even if they all excelled at it, with the category of "truck driver" exemplary. We have over 3.2 million drivers of light, heavy and tractor-trailer trucks--which is to say 24 times as many truck drivers as we do coders, and some three-fifths as many truck drivers as we do people employed across the whole computer field (again, something we would never guess from how people conventionally discuss these matters).

All of this is before we get to the matter of whether or not coding is itself going into decline as a profession in the wake of advances in artificial intelligence, as suggested by one working programmer whose remarks I read this week. As is so often the case with the essays in his increasingly unfortunate chosen forum (sufficiently unfortunate that it seems to me undeserving of a link that would bring it more readers) he meanders quite a bit and never really makes a point worth making, and subjects the reader to a great many stupid conventionalities as he does so (like the whole coding as the new literacy idiocy). All the same, it does provide some interesting anecdotal evidence of the new chatbots increasingly taking over the task, in large part because they are increasingly able to outdo humans at this very practical function the way they have recently outdone them at functions that were less necessary to the "structures of everyday life" (as with mastery of games like chess and Go).

Taking such claims at face value it seems to me that, while it is not inconceivable that more people will be involved in software development in one way or another, those who actually code as we have known it--and do so as trained, paid, full-time professionals--will probably become fewer rather than more numerous within the years ahead, making the disconnect between the occupational realities and the media-promulgated perceptions about coders discussed here even wider than it is now.

Captain Marvel 2: Looking Ahead to the Second Weekend

We now have some perspective on the opening weekend of The Marvels; some sense of how its second weekend is likely to go; and the reaction to all of the same.

Right now much is being made of not only how the movie's opening compares to that of the original Captain Marvel ($47 million versus the $153 million the first made, and just a quarter of the $186 million to which that gross would be equivalent now), but how it has had a weaker opening than any of the prior thirty-two Marvel Cinematic Universe films released to date in current dollar figures, including 2008's The Incredible Hulk fifteen inflationary years earlier (that movie made $55 million, which is more like $78 million today after adjustment for price rises), and long before the MCU became a brand--and all this accomplished by a non-sequel centered on a CGI-based character who had already proven hard to set up as the lead of his own movie (such that the MCU has not repeated the feat since), in contrast with the kind of hit the first Captain Marvel was.* Moreover, there seems little expectation of Captain Marvel 2 being saved by a leggy run, Boxoffice Pro projecting a 65 percent drop from the first weekend to the second to give it a second weekend take of $16 million, leaving the movie with only a bit over $71 million after ten days in release.

By comparison The Flash had almost $88 million collected at the same point in its run.

Should the film's grosses, falling from a lower level to start (The Flash opened bigger), continue to decay at that rate for any length of time the movie could be expected to finish out with a run well below that of The Flash ($108 million), and indeed below the long-depreciated $100 million mark.** (Just consider the opening weekend multiplier for the June release--1.97. Applied to Captain Marvel 2 it leaves one with just $92 million, near the low end of the range I suggested right before opening weekend.)

Meanwhile it has been noted that the overseas markets seem unlikely to come to the rescue, with these accounting for 57 percent of the gross to date, and China especially weak--the movie opening to under $12 million there, versus the $89 million it managed in 2019 (which constitutes an 89 percent drop in opening weekend gross in real terms). And while I have not seen any estimates of the international gross in the film's second weekend, I have no expectation of their being any better than those projected for North America.

If this movie is going to turn things around the way Elemental did (a possibility I thought slight but still worth raising) it will either be very soon or not at all.

* I refer, of course, to the reception to 2003's Hulk.
** The Flash opened to $55 million in its first three days--17 percent higher than Captain Marvel 2's opening.

Captain Marvel 2's Opening Weekend: The Numbers Are In (and They're Not Pretty)

As of late Sunday (by which time, most of the period has passed and few surprises remain on these matters) Captain Marvel 2 was expected to take in $47 million on opening weekend--not the lowest figure predicted for it, but safely within the range Boxoffice Pro predicted before the weekend ($35-$49 million).

At least as of this point the film has not defied the expectations for it--and indeed the media is pretty gloomy about the movie (even as the claqueurs, being claqueurs, fall all over themselves declaring "I don't wanna hear about no superhero fatigue!"). Still, while it is almost impossible to picture this movie getting anywhere near the gross of the billion-dollar hit that was the original, as I have said before even relative successes are less front-loaded than they used to be--the possibility existing that decent legs will at least partially compensate for a weak initial reception. Indeed, while everything would pretty much have to go right for the movie after this point (the way they did for Elemental) for this to happen, it is not wholly out of the question that the movie will grind its way somewhere near the break-even point I previously suggested might be in the vicinity of $600 million.

The result is that how things go in the next two weeks will be worth watching for anyone following this story--while there may be some hope for the movie in the 84 percent Audience score at Rotten Tomatoes, and the relatively weak competition the movie can be expected to have through the coming holiday season.

Disney Has Shaken Up its Release Schedule. What Will it Mean for the MCU?

Just recently the expectation had been that three Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) would be coming out in 2024--Deadpool 3, Captain America 4 and The Thunderbolts, with at least one of them snagging that first weekend in May that for decades has been monopolized by the MCU. (Originally it was supposed to be Captain America 4, but then they said it would be Deadpool 3, and then because the movie was not actually finished some said Captain America 4 again.)

According to Variety there will only be one--coming out in the next fourteen months--Deadpool 3, hitting theaters on that last July weekend before the traditional dump month of August (the same weekend Captain Marvel 2 was originally supposed to release on this year). Meanwhile Captain America 4 has been bumped to February 2025 and The Thunderbolts to that last weekend of July 2025.

Some of this is an unavoidable function of the delays imposed on these productions by the recent strikes. Still, one may wonder if, given the way the MCU has been doing lately--and the way that Captain Marvel 2 seems set to become a flop of historic, The Flash-like proportions, Disney-Marvel is not finding it in its interest to give the brand a breather and try to rebuild some good will with audiences. One can see the decision not to push back Captain America 4 to May 2024 but instead still have a belatedly released Deadpool 3 be the next movie as consistent with that logic. As Deadpool was originally not part the MCU franchise (it was spun off from FOX's X-Men films), and looks and feels different from the other films (in its R-rated "edginess," its having what Peter Biskind called the "first alt-right superhero"), many who are less than happy with the recent MCU films may still be enthusiastic about a new Deadpool movie, while the MCU's runners may hope that any good will that movie earns the franchise will carry over to the next MCU films--all as any disappointment with which Captain Marvel 2 becomes associated fades in the public's memory in at least some degree. Assuming I am right about this I think this is a very limited strategy--but admittedly the runners of the MCU, just like the rest of Hollywood, do not exactly have a lot of great options at this stage of the game.

Was an Expectation of a $250 Million Worldwide Gross Overoptimistic for Captain Marvel 2?

Back in May I estimated on the basis of the performance of prior Marvel Cinematic Universe films (and especially what seemed to me the closest point of comparison, Black Panther 2) that Captain Marvel 2 (The Marvels) would in real terms make half what the original did--some $600-$700 million globally.

However, the way big franchise films just like this one kept flopping over the summer had me increasingly considering (as I had, correctly, with Indiana Jones 5) the possibility of a Solo-like collapse for the MCU franchise with this movie. And when I saw Boxoffice Pro's first publicly released tracking-based estimates that was what seemed to have come to pass, such that I downgraded my estimate to the $250-$500 million range a month ago.

Of course, expectations for the film have only continued to erode since (with a $50-$75 million opening weekend now thought too high, the last estimate in the $35-$49 million range), and on that basis I recently broached the possibility that the film would fail to make even $100 million in the North American, domestic, market--doing even less well than the DCEU's The Flash. Should that nightmare scenario come to pass for the film it is possible that, should the domestic/international split for the film be the same as it was for the original Captain Marvel); or the foreign gross erode even more heavily in an era in which Chinese moviegoers will not be buying $150 million in tickets the way they did last time; the film's gross could easily fall short of the $250 million mark globally.

In other words, the movie will have grossed--not netted, grossed--less than the outlay for just the production, with the result a flop that even by this year's standards could mean hundreds of millions of dollars in losses. Still, as audiences are just now starting to see the film there remains the possibility that this movie, like so many others this year, will manage to surprise the box office-watchers--with, as I suggested in an earlier post, audiences liking what they see, and good legs partly redeeming a weak opening to make what (as with Elemental) looked like a sure flop a hit instead. For what it is worth it seems that audiences right now are being kinder to the film than the critics (even the "All Audience" score on Rotten Tomatoes 73 percent, against the 61 percent score the critics provided), but one way or the other we will probably have a pretty good idea of which way things will tend not much later than Thanksgiving weekend.

Writing, Editing and the "80/20 Rule"

Not long ago I remarked the rather miserable quality of the advice that we tend to get about writing and editing. Indeed, it seems to me that when it comes to editing we can often find better advice--even about editing prose--just looking at discussion of software editing.

Why is that? I suppose that it is that people generally don't think much of writing as a practical activity where "time is money" and deadlines press (even though they do for professional writers), but that they do think in such terms when considering software writing, and so discuss the matter more seriously.

The particular bit of this that I have in mind is the Pareto principle-derived "80/20 rule"--or rather, one particular form of it, holding that 80 percent of a software engineering team's effort on a project will have to do with just 20 percent of the piece of software, an extreme disproportion (the team putting in 16 times as much work, relatively speaking, on that part as the whole rest of the thing). In at least a broad way this principle seems to me to apply to work on prose as well, limited portions of a text likewise likely to suck up an extremely disproportionate share of the time and effort.

I might add that this becomes clearer in hindsight than in advance as those doing the work find themselves going over that bit again and again and again to get it right, or as close to right as they can, with even those who know that this kind of thing happens unpleasantly surprised when it does happen in a particular place and time (the more in as they may have hoped to get lucky and avoid it). The fact plays its part in so often making the start of a writing project a much more enjoyable thing than its end (how, as Winston Churchill put it, a book is a plaything at the beginning but eventually turns tyrant and monster), and the wretchedness to which the rewriting process so often ends--to say nothing of how often writers, like software engineers, find themselves running behind schedule, making the process that much more miserable.

Captain Marvel 2 (The Marvels) Comes Out Friday. What Do the Predictions for the Movie's Opening Weekend Look Like?

Boxoffice Pro's first long-range forecast for the opening weekend of Captain Marvel 2 had the film debuting to a $50-$75 million gross.

Now, as might have been expected given the erosion of their expectations for the film in the subsequent weeks, with the weekend upon us, the high end of the range they project is below the low end of the range they announced a month ago--$35-$49 million.

Of course, as Boxoffice Pro published this figure as part of the weekend forecast, not a long-range forecast, they have not published a prediction for the film's overall run. However, they generally had in mind the movie making somewhere around two-and-a-half times its opening weekend gross (a typical figure for such movies until recently at least), which, when they still predicted a $45-$62 million opener, worked out to an estimate of $109-$156 million last week. Should we apply the same multiplier to the $35-$49 million opening weekend, then we would end up with the movie making somewhere in the range of $85 million and $125 million--in other words, plausibly falling short of the $100 million mark that even The Flash managed to breach, and making Ant-Man 3 look like a spectacular success by comparison.

Make no mistake--if this projection is accurate this is bad, for the movie, and for the Marvel Cinematic Universe to which it is so important. But is it accurate? Just a few days ago I attempted to chart out the most favorable scenario for which the film's backers could hope--that audiences actually like the movie, and good word of mouth gives it legs that partially redeem a weak opener, as happened to some extent with Guardians of the Galaxy 3, and as happened with that other Disney release Elemental especially. This could still happen--but to say it is likely would be another, different, thing, and it now seems a little less likely with the critics proving not at all kind to the movie. (Right now the Rotten Tomatoes score stands at 58 percent.) Of course, we have seen audiences prove much more favorable than critics to films this year that ended up performing above expectations--as with those video game-based hits The Super Mario Bros. Movie and Five Nights at Freddy's. (For the latter film the audience score is an approving 88 percent--against the appalling 29 percent score the critics gave it.) Still, The Marvels seemed to me unlikely to be that kind of critics-hate-it-but-viewers-love-it success (the more in as the critics have been so good to the MCU films over the years), leaving this movie that much longer and harder any road to success.