Les Mis set to be highest grossing movie musical of all time. — Page 3

SM2 --- LOL!

My caps key didn't take. That should be a dollar sign, not a five. I will fix it.

EDIT: Actually, it's pretty safe to say the movie will take in somewhere between forty dollars and five hundred and sixty million dollars. I should have just left it.

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Updated On: 12/25/12 at 06:29 PM

I'm not sure what the world record is, but in Britain, Mamma Mia holds the record I think for highest-grossing movie musical and, because of the material, I think Les Mis wouldn't have an easy time outdoing it in terms of box office numbers, despite its popularity.

However, I would relish to see this film do well. I haven't yet seen it, so can't comment on what it's like, but if it's as good as the British reviewers have been saying (the critical response in the US has been far more mixed by comparison), I hope Andrew Lloyd Webber absolutely seethes with rage and bitterness as he watches the film of the show he detested back in 1985 and called Cameron Mackintosh a "catastrophic idiot" for pursuing trounce the p*ss-poor effort of his and Joel Schumacher's 8 years ago in both critical and box-office terms.

There's no other show in terms of popularity, longevity, financial success, style and genre that is as similar to Miz as Phantom is, yet they really did royally screw up back in 2004 with the film version of the latter. Although ALW in his usual revisionism has recently begun making comments to the effect that he wasn't happy with that film (despite at the time saying he couldn't see how it could be any better), it'd be nice to hear more of the same from him in light of the Les Mis film doing well. Who knows, maybe it'll persuade someone out there to do a remake with an A-list cast who can act and sing and a director who can actually direct this time.

According to Deadline it received an A cinemascore. Word of mouth should be excellent.

Update from Nikki Finke ( Deadline Hollywood) --

https://www.deadline.com/2012/12/first-box-office-1-%E2%80%98les-miserables%E2%80%99-2-django-opening-huge-on-christmas-day/

>>HO HO HUGE! #1 ‘Les Misérables’ Opens To $18M And #2 ‘Django Unchained’ $14M On Xmas

By NIKKI FINKE, Editor in Chief | Tuesday December 25, 2012 @ 10:15pm PSTTags: Box Office, Django Unchained, Les Miserables, Parental Guidance

TUESDAY 10:15 PM, 3RD UPDATE: It may be Christmas Day quiet in the malls but it’s busy, busy, busy in the multiplexes around the U.S. and Canada. My sources say this turned into a supersized Christmas Day for domestic moviegoing. That’s a great year-end gift for Hollywood. Audiences repaid the favr by gving all three new wide-release movies no less than ‘A-’ scores to help their word of mouth. Leading the pack is Working Title/Universal’s Les Misérables debuting #1 in 2,808 theaters and receiving a coveted ‘A’ CinemaScore from audiences. The musical lived up to both Fandango’s and MovieTickets’ reports of huge advance online sales. (It was the #1 advance ticket-seller among all Christmas Day releases, surpassing previous record-holder Sherlock Holmes in 2009.) The studio was hoping Tom Hooper’s adaptation of the world-reknown musical would open to $10+M. Well, my insiders say today’s grosses looked like a big $15M to $20M — now more like $18M — for the PG13 film that runs 2 hours and 37 minutes and stars Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway, and Russell Crowe. (Speaking of the latter, may I never again have to hear Crowe sing like a cat being strangled. I hope he lip-syncs in that rock band of his…) Of course, Christmas Day tends to have higher mix of presales, especially for the openers, so these numbers could change a lot by Wednesday and Thursday. But as one studio exec analyzes, “Christmas Day has very unique play patterns by genre, region of the country, ethnicity, and target demo. You won’t really know where films are headed until Friday. But that’s a fantastic number for Les Miz.”<<<



Big Opening Day numbers ( $ 18 million for Christmas Day alone) and a Cinemascore of "A" !!

Scorpion, I had no idea ALW spoke out publicly against Miz, but I do agree with your take on the Phantom film--while Miz probably gets more love from critics on stage than Phantom ever has, anyway, I think people all knew not to take the movie too seriously when the director and pre-production was announced

Phantom was reviewed far more favourably in Britain when it premiered and got a healthy amount of positive notices (despite ALW recently trying to dismiss the savaging by the British critics of Paint Never Dries, claiming Phantom had the same reaction, which is patently untrue). As is well known, Les Mis was widely panned by the vast majority of British critics. Frank Rich and his ALW vendetta, though, meant the New York Times had the reverse opinion. I really do think Phantom in the right hands could have been a very fine motion picture. But alas, it was given to a hack best known for derailing the Batman franchise with a cast from hell. It helps enormously that Cameron seems to care an awful lot about Les Mis, whereas ALW couldn't give two hoots about his biggest success and has demonstrated repeatedly that he has no clue as to why it's so popular.

As for ALW on Les Mis, he didn't go public but the words he used leaked out eventually and were documented.

Updated On: 12/26/12 at 06:58 AM

LOL Yeah, no. It won't do that.

When all is said and done, I predict it will make somewhere between $100-$125 million total in the U.S. Roughly on a par with Dreamgirls, but probably not as much as Hairspray.

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I think because of the global awareness for Les Miz, it will do better than most recent American musical films internationally. That will help with the overall grosses.

Mamma Mia! did incredibly well abroad for the same reason. (And neither were American stage musicals originally.)

Dreamgirls, a modest box office hit in the U.S., didn't do very well at all overseas. It depends on the awareness and the subject. Les Miz has that going for it.

But I would look for a "record breaking" opening week for Les Miz, then a big drop-off during the next 2-3 weeks. And a slow crawl to the finish line. Awards will help this one, but even a win for Best Supporting Actress isn't going to generate additional tens of millions.

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I think it will hit that number word-wide. (Not just domestically, but all markets.)

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But that's $18million on opening day, not the opening weekend. That's pretty darn good for a 3 hour musical, right?

For some much needed perspective:

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/days/holidays.htm?page=xmasopen&p=.htm

$18 million would be the second best opening day gross and fourth best gross on Christmas, so that is pretty damn good.

"I also expect it to drop off significantly the following 2-3 weeks.

As most films do. Will be interesting to see. I bet everyone at universal is having a very merry holiday.

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Also, what I noticed, everyone is saying that most of the shows are all "Sold Out", and that is because there are not that many showings of this film. I have ten movie theaters near my home and only 3 theater houses were showing Les Mis and very few times as well..one movie theater had only one showing at 10pm.

That's a good point. My theater only had one showing Christmas Day (7:30pm). Therefore it was rather packed though there were several walkouts. I think these were novices who were intrigued by the trailer and/or hoopla surrounding the film and wanted to check it out for themselves, but in the end it was just not for them.


I also expect it to drop off significantly the following 2-3 weeks.

I predict this, too. The musical has a built-in fan base, so everyone who wanted to see it rushed to see it Christmas day, but I don't see it having a lot of repeat business.

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Updated On: 12/26/12 at 02:29 PM

My 11:45 showing this morning was packed, and when I got out, the next showing (and hour later) was already sold out.

And for some "perspective" the film is playing in 2,808. Just a little over 200 theaters less than Django.

The film is opening huge. No one is getting ahead of themselves. Now weather it keeps steady or drops hard next week is another story.