Now first off I wanna say our theatre is not the biggest, but however when it comes to kids movies, our theatre gross is almost EXACTLY the same as the PTA for the weekend for the country, so we can predict pretty close to what a kids movie will open with...
Polar Express today has bombed up to this point just fyi...lemme give you some numbers, we have Incredibles and Polar on 4 screens each, almost exact showtimes, school is out tomorrow....

Incredibles (patron count)

3:30 - 95
4:10 - 100
4:45 - 89
5:15 - 67
7:00 - 105
7:25 - 75
7:50 - 65
8:20 - 110

Polar (patron count)

3:45 - 12
4:15 - 20
4:45 - 11
5:20 - 4
7:00 - 26
7:20 - 14
7:40 - 6
8:00 - 24

just thought I would pass along some info, like I said this is just us and I havnt checked around, maybe we just have people living close to us that just love Disney and hate Tom Hanks but...YIKES is all I can say

I'm sorry, but I'll be glad if this movie bombs simply because it makes no sense for it to succeed. I don't like to see numbers that make me feel like the world has gone crazy. :wink: A 40m 3 day weekend would do that. I really don't see anything but bomb written on this thing.

I'm not surprised. I'm expecting $5m tomorrow (maybe $6-7m), but I dont think this will be a big film. Why?


Take a look:







This is just plain weird and freaky. I mean, the humans seem to be caught somewhere between the animation and real life word. It's just so... :?
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A crowd report from George Braun over at BOM:

These crowd reports don't sound like 5m. They sound like 2m or less.

Damn the pages are slow to load :x

DP, I agree, 4 people in a 350 seat theatre?

My $5m prediction was based on fairly decent business on 3,650 theatreso n a day where people might have the day off and where films traditionally increase and where Pokemon: The First Crap Film made $10m.


if you look at 1999, the Friday increase are around 90% for the most part, so this isnt one of those situations where small weekdays turn into huge weekend numbers.

http://www.the-numbers.com/charts/daily ... 91112.html


Hm... :?

Thats about what happened to us...we have it in a 175, 200, 200, 325 seater...not even coming close to doing anything, while Incredibles keeps on chuggin...

Personally I hope it bombs, the trailer has always given me the creeps, and this has been the first movie all year I did not screen (that says alot considering I even watched Super Babies )

And I think you're right about the creepy aspect. This is the beginning of Ebert's review:

"The Polar Express" has the quality of a lot of lasting children's entertainment: It's a little creepy. Not creepy in an unpleasant way, but in that sneaky, teasing way that lets you know eerie things could happen. There's a deeper, shivery tone, instead of the mindless jolliness of the usual Christmas movie.


The review is uniformly positive, he gave it 4 stars(Click Here ) but I think this is a case where the creepiness factor will override any quality-oriented issues. Plus, The Incredibles is one helluva alternative.

yeah, those kids look like Freaks!

i never liked the idea of this movie, Animated movie should be funny! IMO.
animated drama or Sci-fi never work, look what happend to Final Fantasy (of course Fantasy was extremely boring)

if this movie Bomb badly Warner Bros. its in a lot of trouble!

Ive always known this will bomb and predicted back in June that this would be Hanks' third non $100m hitter in a row. The best this could make would be $80m with good legs.

The reason why i want this to not do well is to teach WB a lesson. They have to be the worst studio. This has to be the most pathetic scheduling decision ever.

I think the animation is the best we have ever seen.....it's not arguable....it IS the best ever.

This is the most lifelike humans in these movies have ever looked.

The 4:20pm show of the IMAX 3-D version was SOLD OUT at the LCE METREON here in San Francisco Wednesday afternoon.....

I was seeing THE INCREDIBLES, which was also sold out in a 300 seater..

Here's a copy of my review

The Polar Express looks great. Well, except for the kids, most notable the black girl. She looks horrible.

I would compare this movie to Willy Wonka and Chocolate Factory. Death and danger hang like smog over this film. It seems that in every other scene, a kid could die in some horrible fashion.

Some of the action sequences are very intense. My favorite is when the train blazes up and down a series of tracks unlike any rollercoaster on planet Earth. It then slides across a frozen lake without brakes, while the ice begins to crack. It's very exciting and I look forward to seeing it in IMAX 3D sometime soon.

Then there's the elves who don't seem very happy at all. Some act like extras from The Sopranos. Others seem to delight in an almost religious fervor over the arrival of good old Saint Nick. I've seen some reviews compare the North Pole to Nazi Germany. The comparison is not lost on me.

Is the film bad? No, not at all. I think Bob Zemeckis did a great job with the technology available. I just can't believe that in 10 years, families will gather around their wall sized plasma televisions on Christmas and watch this film. It doesn't have the heart of an instant holiday classic. It feels more like an exercise in excess or a demo reel for future CGI projects.

Maybe this film will open doors for other films to use cutting edge computer animation to help tell wonderful and exciting films. But during a weekend where The Incredibles uses similar technology and does a much better job, it does make you wonder. What was the point?

B-

I think my bad reaction to this film does have a lot to do with how the characters look and interact with each other. Take the hot chocolate scene, it's laughable, horrid. And there's no chemistry between any of the characters.

And the black girl in particular, that picture Box posted, it only represents 1% of how much of a monstrosity she is.

There's something called the Uncanny Valley. It refers to the point where humans reject robots and CGI characters for looking too humanlike. There may be something to that theory.

It also doesn't help that all the kids are played by adults (from Zemeckis' mouth, it was a way to get around child labor laws).

I don't think this film is an instant classic, holiday or not, that other films are. :?

Yes it's surreal looking but it fits the story which is in the realm of dream/reminiscence. A kind of half real half fake look is perfect for the tone of the movie, for this movie in particular, not all animated movies. I thought it was freaky at first too till I saw more extended clips and got the gist of the movie, it fits it.

That dosent meant anything. This movie will gorss at least 30 million this weekend.

polar express has less appeal amongst teenies and tweenies and stuff. Expect much higher numbers on the weekend when the real kids come out with families ... it still looks like a bad omen but gotta wait ..

remember Shrek 2 anyone??

I was thinking the same thing yesterday afternoon, but then I realized it's a complete different situation than Shrek 2. Today is a holiday, and that means Wednesday should have behaved like a semi-Friday and see better than normal weekday business, so how Polar Express did yesterday mean a lot to project how it will do on Thursday and for the entire weekend. There won't be 250% Thursday-to-Friday increase this time.

The technology may be ground-breaking, but it doesn't necessarily generate strong box office business. Just look at Final Fantasy and Sky Captain.

Heh, I looked at the Theater Count thread before this one and said I was going to raise my prediction, but reading that, I'll keep it where its at

Regardless, I am such a sucker for Christmas Holiday movies I am going to see this definitely. Holiday movies make me so happy and cheerful

I'll be seeing it this weekend.