Ghostbusters 2016 Box Office Predictions

Ok, friends. I haven’t seen a post yet for box office theories. It’s all the rage these days with blockbuster budgets and insane opening weekends. Why not have that conversation about the new Ghostbusters? July is within reach and the first trailer has dropped. Dislikes on YouTube have packed a wallop, but the air on the Ghostbuster Fans board has signs of hope mixing in with the fear. Will this be the years F4NTASTIC flop or a surprise Jurassic World that thrives on nostalgia? What does this movie need to make for Ghost Corps to move forward with this new universe and new generation of Ghostbusters? Let’s discuss!

As much hate as it’s getting now, I can see it doing relatively well in theaters, either from morbid curiosity or actually wanting to see it overall. However, it could also bomb like a rock. I do not see it becoming a box office success or anything resembling a homerun. There is entirely too much hatred involved in this movie, either the fans for the film or the film for longtime fans. Too much hate to be a success.

I feel like the hate is an allusion. This movie will destroy with kids and females. The hate is being spewed primarily on YouTube but if you know anything about modern movie tracking, you know that up votes and down votes are not a metric that can accurately predict box office.

Box office prediction is generated from all sorts of metrics, two of the main ones being Google searches and total viewcount. I can’t speak to the first one but as of right now, the trailer has more than 30 Million views between the YouTube and Facebook release.

Also, good and bad, there has been approx 400,000 total votes on the YouTube video. With 16 million views, that’s somewhere around 3%. So 3% of all people who watched the trailer took time to cast a vote for like or dislike, that’s not a great sample size.

The point being that the movie is polarizing and people are going out of their way to spew the hate and the love. I think it will do very well at the box office, maybe 75-100 million opening weekend.

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Jangonate posted this in the reboot trailer discussion yesterday:

I think Paul Feig knows how to make a comedy that appeals to most people. I don’t see this movie bombing. Everyone I talk to who isn’t an adamant GB fan is into it. Even if its terrible (I think it’ll be acceptable) it’ll probably still make a decent splash. If its good then it’ll probably make its money back easily.

Edit: Also Spy had a terrible first trailer but the movie was pretty good if you don’t hate that style of comedy.

Since you brought up one post of mine, I’ll bring another from another board I wrote that speaks to it:

Yes, it’s getting a lot of dislike and yes that’s only 2% of views, but I find it interesting how the likes and views are still tracking alongside BvS, a film that is expected to have a $140 million opening weekend.

I don’t think GB will have something quite so large, though. Near a $100 million maybe. I think a lot of folks will check it out just to see what the fuss is all about…" So this is the movie that people have been actively hating on!" If the movie ends up good, that would be the doorway for some good word of mouth and more people coming to see it after the opening weekend. If it’s bad, then we will see the negative prophecies come true!

This film has a budget of $150 million, right? I think it’s going to need to make around $600 million WW for this to be a success. Sequels might get greenlit for a bit less, but I think there hoping for this and more. For Feig, Bridesmaids, I believe, is his highest grossing movie. It made 288 million and I imagine his fans will support this new endeavor. Add in the nostalgia of GB, lowering the rating from R to PG-13, the love all things paranormal are getting and this could easily make that amount if it ends up being a good flick. Doesn’t need to be fun, but it needs to be fun and cohesive with good chemistry between the actors. I’m optimistic, myself, but any of you reading my posts knows that.

When I quoted you I didn’t realize you were also the one who had started this thread. Haha. Now I feel like a ■■■■■■■ for quoting YOU to YOU. Sorry bro.

In regards to BvS I think thats a little different. BvS has a base from Man of Steel already (so there is some kind of quality assurance in place or at least a “you kinda know what you’re in for”) where as GB has been kinda fighting an uphill battle from day one as this unnecessary step-child.

Youtube is notoriously bad for trolls and haters. I’m not saying that everyone who has a complaint about the trailer is wrong. FAR from it. Legitimate complaints are a welcome part of any discussion. But I think its easy for those legitimate concerns to be hidden away by ■■■■■■ people with ■■■■■■ comments. I feel like the general consensus everywhere else (aside from maybe Reddit) is that it looks decent.

Also, the trailer itself was pretty poorly put together. Paul Feig just does not do trailers well. The next trailers are going to need to be better. I think it’ll make its money back with families and their kids opening weekend since it is PG-13. Those early reviews are going to be important for it and so will word of mouth. If its good then it could make $150- $200. At that point (before even going overseas) I think Sony would be happy. Remember, this is clearly a big merch push for them. If the movie does do well with kids then merch is going to go flying. I think that’s the key item here. Does the movie do well enough in addition to the merchandise sales being worth green lighting more stuff.

Disclaimer - At no point do I believe myself to be a financial wizard. Purely speculation on the limited information I have.

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Hey, it’s just nice to be quoted!

Oh, I know it’s not apples and apples with comparing trailer reception. I think the key point is that A LOT of folks have seen this trailer and the grand majority of those opinions we don’t know.

It wasn’t the best trailer. I’m actually excited about all the recuts because some of them work better. This really just needed to be a good teaser to highlight the key elements of the film like gear and ghosts and give a taste. Save the story from a later trailer. Yes, Feig trailers aren’t the best and a lot of that is because he refuses to fill it with all the funny parts. He keeps those for the film itself. That’s great, but the problem is all the folks just looking for a reason not to like this film and the ones on the fence. They need to see something that knocks it out of the park.

Confession, I laughed a lot at “The power of Patty compels you!” I know a lot didn’t, but different strokes for different folks.

Who knows right now? Like most big-budget movies nowadays, the fate of the franchise may ultimately rest in the hands of our red brothers.

Yeah I see it doing well in the theatre but I think any goodwill the film gets will be lost when they try to make a sequel.

A couple of things that may work in the film’s favour are:

*It’s a Ghostbusters movie, the first in 27 years. It’ll certainly have a bit of the nostalgia factor working for it “Oh hey, Ghostbusters, I remember that being awesome!”

*It’s a Paul Feig movie, the content of which is questionable, but he’ll have some presence in the public consciousness from previous films, some people who were fans of his prior work may come along for his newest venture, especially with it having McCarthy in it as well.

I don’t believe the film will be a roaring success, at best it could be a bit of a sleeper - and maybe just about make enough to have Sony think about making a sequel. Pixels is probably rightfully described as a commercial failure, even though there are people (myself included) who thought it was dumb but fun. The 2016 film can (and may well) end up in that category, fondly remembered by some, and derided by others.

I’d like it to be successful enough if it’s good, as the success or failure will effect the expiration date on the tie-in merchandise for the classic franchise.

My personal feeling is this will probably bomb in Australia.

Sure there are plenty of GB fans here but the general movie going public barely even knows theres a remake coming.

Add to that most people here consider McCarthy to be the new Sandler, hate Wiig and don’t know who McKinnon and Jones are.

Theres also the fact that Feigs movies tend to under perform as well its not positive for Australian grosses.

Plus everyone in this country just downloads movies too which takes away from the box office.

I hate downloading but much like Bay’s TMNT I’ll download the shit outa Feigbusters.

Okay, and I’ll quote myself as well…

Paul Feig needs to keep his fans on board if he wants this to be a success. I wont bother comparing the film to others from the time as all them are of active brands that havn’t been dormant 25 years. I find it funny that BvS and TMNT 2 are being compared. They both have had movies released in recent times and are active brands.

View counts are insanely high on the first trailer and that also speaks to the interest in it. Sony Pictures Entertainment youtube page ranks it at 6th spot right now with 16,824,906 views, and that has happened in only two days. All new things take time to accept, and Ghostbusters (2016) is not Ghostbusters (1984) and people will have to come to terms with it. New crew, different era, different climate. It would have been the same issue with Ghostbusters III as it would have been a pass the torch. :love:

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I think this movie can be a success just on the general public (families with kids, curious folks, etc). I do think fan support would go a LONG way to help but the mass general audience is going to be the deciding factor, not us.

I think you hit it right on the nose. The difference with a Ghostbusters 3 though (that would probably look very much like this movie) is that a lot of the fans would be on board from the start. A sequel alienates a lot of people (now a days) who don’t find the original Ghostbusters appealing. Comedy is 100% objective but there does seem to be fads that come into play every generation and the long speech, reaction format doesn’t seem to have survived to 2016. lol

A lot will ride on reviews. The Youtube page is not going well, and it is the worst received trailer ever. I think it will cover costs and no more which means no more Ghostbusters.

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It’s also a trailer that got a ton of views in a very short amount of time. If you want to look at the numbers you need to look at ALL the numbers. It’s view count shows a very popular trailer and even though the like count is dwarfed by the dislikes, it’s actually a pretty high amount for a trailer. We have 3% of people taking time to express their views and that is a poor sample size. What does it mean? It means people against the moving are quoting the dislikes as definitive proof this will be a bomb and people viewing the likes and the view count as call for celebration when, in fact, the answer isn’t as clear as we’d like.

Actually 2/3% is not a small sample size at all for a like to dislike ratio, it’s a pretty healthy sample size for the amount of views. In fact, compared to Batman v Superman which has 25 million views and 190k likes/dislikes I’d say the sample size is better. Age of Ultron had 75 million views and 520k l\d on it. At the moment Ghostbusters is the most disliked trailer, probably ever, and is racking up a l/d ratio of 5:1 in favour of dislikes with an above average sample rate. I’d say this is a good indicator of the feeling towards the remake. It is fast approaching almost 200k more dislikes than likes.

With the Like Dislike ratio, I look at it like this with these two hypothetical people:

I am just a casual fan. I watched the video on YouTube, Facebook or Twitter and enjoyed it. I did not go out of my way to ‘LIKE’ the video on YouTube.

I am a ■■■■■■■■ fan. I don’t like the new movie. I didn’t watch the trailer, but I’m gonna go and find every where I can to dislike it.

The Like / Dislike ratio on GBFans Facebook post of the trailer for example is 5% dislikes for 95% likes. Hopefully that is more representative for the core demographic Sony is going for.

I tend to take Facebook more seriously because someone needs a personal profile to comment. You Tube is a little easier to spam dislikes on.

One of two outcomes; it’ll either be a financially disastrous piece of ■■■■, or a financially successful piece of ■■■■.

I just thought of something that will hurt its box office. Star Trek Beyond opens the following week.