Muppets Most Wanted Box Office Numbers

[JonnyBMuppetMan]

I know I've said it before, but as much as The Muppets is what this touch screen app, computer animation/vfx obsessed society needs...maybe society doesn't deserve the Muppets. The Muppets appeal to special people. It's not a mass appreciation like Pixar films or Star Wars. It's smart humor that's also a rare kind of innocence that while pure isn't bland or easily defined. The Muppets are for weirdos, as Rizzo would attest. A lot of society is not tolerant of being different.

I agree to an extent with what your saying. Although the Muppets are really for everybody, they do particularly appeal to certain people, and I guess if it was always on the level of, say, Adventure Time, in terms of popularity, it probably wouldn't be as special anymore. It's not that people don't deserve them, but more so that they're often taken for granted by the general public.

 

[Drtooth]

Exactly the point I'm trying to make.

It really feels like the reaction is "OH YEAH! I love those guys. I have all their movies on DVD. oh, they have a movie out...ehhh...I'll wait for netflix or something." or "Man! The Muppets have a new movie! We have to see it at once! Jason Segal saved the franchise [2011]...oh wait... saving the franchise means there's another movie? Ehhhhh It's probably not so good so I won't bother [2014]." Or even some Geewunner crap about loving the characters but refusing to see anything past MTM (except for ironically MCC) and then wondering why the franchise isn't current.

On the tiny plus side of hope, Muppet movies never made big bucks (except the first one... at 88 Mil, The Muppets was the second highest grossing) but hit hard on home video. And this thing will probably make more than MFS did by the end of the week into next weekend. So there's that. But calling it a flop for falling 3 million short... really?

 

[goldenstate5]

Are you guys ready for another box office update?

What's that?

No?

Well sorry, here goes.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/daily/chart/
^Yesterday Muppets raked in 1.1 million dollars. Grand total now is 18 million dollars.

Considering that right now elementary schools across the country are on spring break, that's... awful. Normally the drop would be around 50 to 60 percent, with a Monday gross of about 2 to 3 million if the legs held strong, slowly decreasing throughout the week. Here it plummeted 77%. By the end of the work week, Muppets will already be taking in under a million a day, and will most likely end its second weekend just under 30 million.

I think it's about time that America at the very least seems a lost cause. Disney intentionally had Bobin and Stoller write in a world tour to market towards internationals, so let's see if that pays off.

 

[Drtooth]

Not being pessimistic here, but I don't see how 1.1 million on a weekday is terrible especially since it's just a Monday. I honestly didn't see it making over 5 Mil over this week. Maybe at least getting half it's budget back by Friday at most.

It's made almost 20 counting Argentina so far. Not impressive but not terrible. I'm not calling it until next weekend. I'm not exactly hopeful, but weekday traffic wasn't going to be that big anyway.

Edit: Forgot to mention that elementary schools being out is regional. They aren't here.

 

[goldenstate5]

It's the week with the highest number of schools being out, on record.

Divergent, btw, was #1 obviously with 3.3 million.

 

[Drtooth]

While I don't want to get too optimistic, I'm not looking at anything until the week's over.

But yeah. Divergent. Of course it did.

 

[Pinkflower7783]

 

[Muppet Master]

Society lacks imagination. After a decade of ever increasing braindead and garishly unimaginative(and quite mindless) computer generated films catering to ADD kids...it's hard to imagine society fully embracing the Muppets ORGANIC, heart warming, smart humor. Smart kids will be drawn to the Muppets, but sadly a lot of families and parents go right for the Pixar Cars mush, Disney princess crap, and Dreamworks pap.
Im happy to see ANY kids beg their parents for Muppet merch at the store. This isn't the 1980's anymore(sadly)

To me it's amazing that in such a cg-vfx centered society, that something like the Muppets can even still exist. So potentially low weekend returns and mixed critical reviews to me matter little...unless it makes Disney not want to make a third one.

I do wonder how much Disney spent on advertising...feels like they spent zillions and may not get as much returns.

We have to remember, unlike Dr Who/Star Trek/Star Wars/Pixar/Disney/My Little Pony...hardcore Muppet fans are pretty rare.

Well in a world of all that stuff, I feel like I'm basically one of the pretty rare kid muppet fans on this forum (i'm 12), and I do beg my parents for anything muppet, so ya, the only other kid muppet fans I know are two of my friends and even then they're more of the casual type. If you're a muppet fan on this website that's a kid (1-17) please like this comment and everyone else can as well.

 

[DarthGonzo]

I think one of the biggest reasons the 2011 film did so well was that reviews and word of mouth were unbelievably good. Seriously, wasn't it one of the very best reviewed movies of that year? That's an accomplishment. Everyone wants to see a movie like that. Additionally, it was a novelty to see the Muppets in theaters again, since it had been 12 years since the last one. People were moved by the film, and for the most part it hit all the right nostalgia buttons for it's audience. I enjoyed MMW, but to me and my wife, it really didn't compare to the first one, and the reviews seem to reflect that. Maybe rushing a sequel less than two and a half years after the last one might not have been the best idea. Most people I know seem completely ambivalent about it. Heck, we saw it Friday night at 9pm and the theater was maybe half full. That wasn't a good sign.

 

[Muppet Master]

Official estimates are in... not good: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/

Muppets went down even more to 16.5 million. Tomorrow the actuals come out, hopefully it'll rise, but in this case it seems more likely it'll drop even further.

For comparison, Peabody made about 11.7 mil on its third weekend (Muppets would be very lucky to catch that on its second), Lego did around 4 million in business on its seventh weekend (Muppets probably won't even be around for seven weekends), and Disney's own Frozen which stole a good amount of theaters away from Muppets managed to do .7 million on its 18th weekend. (MMW will be on DVD and Blu-Ray by then)

The domestic total will most likely wind up between 35 and 40 million, which means it needs at least 10 to 15 million overseas to not wind up a total flop... that isn't hard as I think MMW can do it. The real question is whether or not it can do extraordinarily better than that. Hope to god the answer is yes.

EDIT: Seems BoxOfficeMojo is already reporting a 1.5 mil overseas gross from this weekend http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=muppets2.htm

However, since there is no page up yet for foreign totals I have no idea where this is coming from. How many countries has it opened up in yet?

Oh come on don't be so hard on them. Sure they'll never be as big as those titles, but heck in their heyday the original muppet movie (TMM) made $216,900,400 only counting the domestic box office (adjusted for ticket price inflation, because it's a 30+ film) and was the 9th highest grossing film of 1979. Even GMC which had some tepid reviews back then managed $93,731,000 almost $100 million which is still a decent total, and it was in the top 30 highest grossing film of 1981. Then the box office for muppet films kind of left with $63 mil from MTM and $64 million and less from the rest of the muppet films. So in all think of it as this way. The muppets are old and aren't as spry and young as the other films on the market, but in their heyday they were a billion times better than TLM, PAS, and F.