Change is hard.
Not changing is hard.
Obviously, the Biden-to-Harris story triggers all kinds of people. Some of that is purely political. Some of it is very personal. And most of it is fear of change or fear of not changing.
But this is not a column about politics.
For 2 weekends in a row, we have had movies open that did better than expectations. And both, literally, had the guessers changing their guesses all weekend long, from Thursday night - now the weekend - to Monday morning.
Both movies, Longlegs and Twisters, took the path of absolute committment to their ideas of what they were selling, who they were selling it to, and how the films would be received. True tracking experts, which none of the people you read talking about tracking (including myself), saw movement when others did not or chose not to see.
The problem with tracking being quoted all the time now is that this is not the purpose of tracking… just as CinemaScore is not there to predict more than the response of the first weekend crowd attending each movie to know how to manage the marketing to the second weekend crowd. These valuable tools have been bent into public marketing materials and as such, lose legitimacy. Actual marketing people know how to use these tools and they still deliver when they have for decades.
What does media coverage using tools like these, constantly steeping itself in “being right” or “being surprised” or “being disappointed” really mean to the bottom line of films? Nothing…. in and of itself.
90% of what Deadpool & Wolverine will be this next weekend is locked in stone. We only know - well, someone knows - what the presale is and where it is and how expansive it is from the hot play times. Tracking may be dead on or off by 30%… no way to know until we know. No way to know in real detail Friday morning or Saturday morning, no matter how exuberant or underwhelmed the trade stories are every six hours. Doesn’t mean the guessing might match the reality. But the context is almost always just how wrong we are comfortable being. If things are 10% off the consensus guess, should media pat itself on the back?
There is also the reality that studios now conspire with NRG and others to manage expectations, for better or for worse. So the media claims about tracking are often - not always - based on adjusted numbers meant to make the studio less vulnerable. And of course, competing studios try to skew expectations against their competitors almost every weekend.
The idea of this piece wasn’t to go off on tracking. But before I get back on track…
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