Tweet counts and analysis for Friday, June 18th.

Twitter Watch: 'Toy Story 3' Primed for Massive Opening

on June 18, 2010 by Alex Edghill

Friday Morning Update: The graph above really does a great job at summarizing this week and my predictions for the weekend. Toy Story 3 huge, Jonah Hex...not so much. Toy Story 3 continued where it left off yesterday and clobbered its movie rivals on Twitter with 21,510 tweets and 32.7% market share. This was up from yesterday's 17,346 tweets and 32.0% market share.

Toy Story 3 Comparisons

	Movie	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Total	Friday	Ratio
2/12/10	*Percy Jackson and The Olympians*	3,124	3,732	5,212	7,654	19,722	$9.78	2,018
3/5/10	*Alice In Wonderland*	12,001	14,449	17,743	39,765	83,958	$41.00	2,048
6/18/10	*Toy Story 3*	13,389	12,288	17,346	21,510	64,533

Alice is the obvious comparison here which is a great yardstick. While I don't expect Toy Story to get quite as high of a ratio, Pixar/Disney have been pushing the social media ticket, even pioneering Facebook ticket prebooking, which wil serve to ensure its well above the standard animated film region of 400-600. The buzz here has been simply spectacular considering the core demographic here is definitely children and families. It is testament to it reaching all quadrants, a recipe for a massive weekend. My prediction remains unchanged from yesterday and we should be looking at a $35 million Friday and $120 million for the entire weekend and the #1 spot by a long ways over The Karate Kid in its sophomore frame.

Jonah Hex definitely had its best day of the week yesterday with 2,721 tweets and 4.1% market share, up from 1,425 tweets on Wednesday and 2.6% market share. Despite this uptick, its overall buzz has been very sparce considering the genre and easy title to gather tweets from.

Jonah Hex Comparisons

	Movie	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu	Total	Friday	Ratio
9/18/09	*Jennifer's Body*	975	980	1,081	2,045	5,081	$2.80	1,815
11/25/09	*Ninja Assassin*	1,057	1,561	3,278	3,822	9,718	$5.67	1,714
4/16/10	*Kick Ass*	1,743	1,923	3,123	4,002	10,791	$7.60	1,420
5/21/10	*MacGruber*	733	1,217	1,749	2,179	5,878	$1.60	3,674
6/18/10	*Jonah Hex*	866	1,221	1,425	2,721	6,233

The above numbers say it all really, the comparisons chosen were all films targeting the same demographic and had easy names to narrow down tweets for (except Kick Ass which was a pain but a valid comparison nonetheless because of the comic connection). Its pretty clear it is going to have a pretty hefty ratio north of 1,400 based on these comparisons, and with quite a bit of buzz being created because of its impending failure, the ratio will suffer further. Its fitting that Jennifer's Body was the first movie I collected data on way back on September 18th of 2009, and now this film marks the 100th film tracked exactly. Thanks to Megan Fox for making bombs to help validate the power of Twitter to smell them out. Look for $3.5 million for Hex on Friday and $9 million for the weekend.

Top 10 Upcoming Movies for Thursday June 17th

Film		Buzz	Positive Buzz	Negative Buzz
1	Toy Story 3	21510	6584	443
2	The Twilight Saga: Eclipse	11775	2436	189
3	Scott Pilgrim vs. the World	4357	1187	52
4	Jonah Hex	2721	565	171
5	The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader	1975	317	12
6	The Last Airbender	1701	420	40
7	Knight and Day	1329	267	34
8	Eat Pray Love	582	203	5
9	Despicable Me	551	186	10
10	Grown Ups	401	100	53

An interesting note on the above numbers is that The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader scored roughly 2,000 tweets thanks to its trailer being released today, while the first Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I trailer debuted to 3,987. The difference in demand and Box Office potential for the two franchises is ever-apparent and Twitter is no exception to the rule.

Check back on Saturday for the final ratio and Friday numbers and again on Sunday for a preview of the following week's openers. Follow @AlexBOXOFFICE on Twitter for additional updates.

Please check the methodology page for information about the project and historic data.