This Is It debuts with $7.4 million
By David Mumpower
October 29, 2009
BoxOfficeProphets.com

How does one spell 'shamon'?
Michael Jackson's This Is It started its limited-engagement box office run with $7.4 million on Wednesday, including the $2.2 million from Tuesday sneaks. Both of these are October records. When Sony acquired distribution rights to the posthumous release of Jackson's concert film, there were big expectations. The price tag of $60 million automatically required the movie to be a blockbuster. Wednesday's debut represents a decent start, particularly considering it did so on an October weekday; however, Sony had to be hoping for more.

The recent comparisons that drive home the quality of this debut are The Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience and Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus: The Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour. The Michael Jackson concert film did better in its first 24 hours than the Jonas Brothers did on any single day of its domestic run. Then again, that film was a box office disappointment. The real comparison is with the Miley Cyrus film, which started with $8.7 million on its first Friday before spiking over 50% on Saturday to $13.1 million. Clearly, This Is It will fall short of that strong $21.8 million in its first two days. Granted, Hannah Montana's opening day was on Friday and it was also kid-targeted, but the expectations for Jackson's film had to have been higher.

This is especially borne out when we compare venue counts and per location average for the two films. Keeping in mind that I am comparing a Wednesday to a Friday, This Is It's per location of $2,139 is only 17% of the Miley Cyrus film's $12,667. One of the key contributing factors to the success of Miley's movie is that its lack of supply heightened and extended demand. This Is It's relative ubiquity in almost 3,500 locations means demand did not match supply on opening day.

Assuming the movie performs like most Wednesday releases, it will see a drop on Thursday. The question is whether it will see a solid 33% drop, the normal-for-Wednesday-release 50% drop, or a more disastrous 66% drop. In thinking about Thursday's box office, though, we're really looking at a Wednesday number of $5.2 million since you should remove the Tuesday sneaks. It has a fairly small number to compare against, so the drop might not be as severe as it appears on paper.

No matter how much demand there is, This Is It will definitely be damaged on Halloween Saturday. Traditionally, for any movie that's not in the horror genre, business on that holiday has been abysmal due to people having other activities such as parties, trick-or-treating, and sitting in pumpkin patches waiting for the Great Pumpkin to arrive. On the plus side, the film is receiving rave reviews and an A Cinemascore, so there is cause for people to want to see the movie if they're inclined to like that sort of thing (i.e. concert movies, Michael Jackson).

One final thing to keep in mind is that Jackson is much popular worldwide than he is in North America, if you imagine that. Internationally, the film made $12.7 million on Wednesday, which is really about double what it did stateside if you take out the midnight sneaks. What all these numbers mean is that by the end of the weekend, Michael Jackson's This Is It will have a worldwide total over $100 million, which should be enough to justify Sony's investment.