Current Box Office Totals

I think Asia will push it over the 200 mark.  Hopefully that is enough to satisfy the suits at Fox.  

On its third week, Prometheus made almost 10 million. So imagine how bad the word of mouth on Covenant has to be, given the fact that Prometheus had its share of controversy as well. And the movie dropped about 1100 movie theaters this week and many more will follow next week. Very dire prospects for Covenant.

@Joylitt, I had a fellow battle buddy ask me if its worth going to see Alien Covenant and I told him I was very disappointed and it will be up to him to decide if he wants to spend the movie on it.  When he saw my reaction; he said, "I pass".  lol

I just do not want to get blamed for people wasting their money.  I had some friends get pissed off at me because I recommended a movie to them and they thought that it stunk.

I made a reply to the other Topic the other day looking how AC seems to have been doing and then looking at % First Week comparisons then Domestic Total and how this reflects to the Total Worldwide... i did this for every Franchise movie since Alien Resurrection and it kind of seems to point to AC looking likely to do about $200M  maybe depend on the Asian Markets it can make a bit more but i seriously doubt it will break $220M

Which may not bold well for the sequel...

FOX will either reduce the Budget..

Or increase the Budget but throw Ripley/Weaver into the mix

'I just do not want to get blamed for people wasting their money.'

So the solution from now on is that you bash every movie, in this way every buddy and friend of yours can save a lot of money.

colonialsoldier Well, in my case I would actually encourage people to go and judge for themselves, unless I think the recommendation is going to get me in trouble.

@BigDave

"Fox reduce the budget"

I would hope all the Covenant space ship sets are still intact? as with the Space Jockey rebuild?

It's one of the reasons I begged Ridley to film BOTH at the same time or at least keep the sets in good shape.

The sequel should use the Covenant ship set and probably the SJ set? 

Sequel should budget fog and smoke for LV-426.

I'd say they should be able to keep the budget under 70 million for the next one.

But...if they tore down the sets already..then heaven help a sequel.

@MonsterZero

Good point!  I didn't think about that.  Alien: Covenant and the next movie are going to be filmed so close together that they could use the same pieces.  That would be genius! 

I'd film the sequel entirely on/in the Covenant ship set.

An old fashioned thriller.

Bring back Shaw and Peter Weyland. Let them bedevil David. Like a Kubrick movie. 

Awaken Daniels and let her be a slave to David as he slowly loses his synthetic mind.

Hallucinating a living Shaw(fully healed or disfigured....dealers choice..)and his father Peter.

I think Noomi would jump at the chance to play a ghost exacting revenge on David!

@MonsterZero

I hope they would AT LEAST do that (and do it well!) than have no sequel at all.  Not a bad idea.  Take it back to the original ALIEN but instead everything isn't real.  Have most of everything happening in the ship.  Instead, though, have David experiment on the Covenant colonists and create tons of eggs! After that he loads a juggernaut with them.  This part of the movie wouldn't last long.  The next part I am about to say would though. As he is flying the juggernaut, the real movie begins.  The hallucinating starts and David is losing his AI mind!  Then!  David kills himself by impregnating himself with an alien from an egg (because he actually feels regret and can't come to terms with what he has done) and sits in the seat waiting for his death!  David can be the space jockey we find in the original ALIEN.  A self-termination!  The movie could have some flashbacks showing Shaw interacting with the Engineers (and not the ones on Paradise.  There's got to be more!  I didn't notice any in Alien:Covenant having space suits or some kind of fusion of machine and humanoid on like the one in Prometheus).  We get our answers and get a super scary movie (because it would have to be if all the scenes mainly happened on a juggernaut).  David could experience in the next movie an emotion we have never seen before from him.  One we never thought he would feel.  DEEP REGRET!  So deep that he wants to die.  I wouldn't think David would kill himself since in the movies he seems to be having so much fun, but in this ALIEN THRILLER he would!

Plus, in the original ALIEN movie when they show the space jockey, the camera zooms in on the eyes and I see a pupil and iris surrounded by a white cornea.  Must be fresh.  Something David could fit in just right with!

A horror movie from the perspective of an AI who thinks he's a god and has it all figured out and better than the people who created him, but he just can't live forever knowing what he has done...

Sign it!

Interesting idea.....

I do fear that the Space Jockey will now be a Synthetic or a Human.

@MonsterZero

I really do hope not... as far as £70M this would not get us far, unless.

*They reuse a lot of the sets/props from AC... stick them in storage and re-use Covenant sets and Juggernaught.

*Reuse and improve the Xenomorph Costume and go back to the Alien idea of keeping it to the Shadows..  We have TWO Face Huggers and so keep those Props too and have just TWO Xenomorphs.

*Cut back on Actors by casting relative unknowns.. Fassbender will be pricey... but the more up and coming cast they get in.. and relative unknowns the Cheaper...

Prometheus had Micheal Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Guy Pearce and Idris Elba who would have cost more to cast than the rest of the Cast combined...  Alien Covenant again with Fassbender, Theron, Waterston and McBride would have cost more than the others Combined.

We need Fassbender for sure... but i think casting can cost a bit to much and can save money...

But then how do they PULL in the $$$$ after the Disappointment with AC.... they may want to attach Star Names?

If they decide to show more Xenomorphs.. to make this more a Aliens flick... on a lower budget... i think we could see some even Worse CGI Aliens, no excuse really as AVP movies Xenomorphs looked decent enough Alien Resurrections was not to bad...

I do fear FOX will only allow a up to $100M Budget and if they indeed keep back some of the Props and Sets then indeed FOX could even slash this to $80M

A lot depends on where AA is set... if they go to LV-223 then they will have to build some expensive sets again... or squeeze some CGI on a Budget.

If its all on the Covenant, or a Baron World.. where there has been no previous Civilization then that would save money.

I think if FOX are to consider a higher Budget of $120-150M they would have to consider bringing in Ripley again... as a younger Girl, then have her as older Ripley at the end.. Narrating the Horrors of Covenant.

The thing is though i think Miss Weaver knows FOX is in trouble with the Franchise and she would MILK them for MILLIONS to even cast her...  i am no fan of her no more..  i think she will be thinking $$$$$$$$$$

I think a few things to remember is RS comments....

Like it or not... he considers Alien his Baby, and it appears he is not a Fan of the Franchise... he refers to the others as Shoot-em-ups where we see many Aliens running around fighting Mercenaries or Marines..

This tells me he preferred the way Alien/Alien 3 handled the Xenomorph.

I feel RS is now changing the Franchise his way, he has thrown in this David creates the Xenomorph Curve-ball and so he has no Care for how this affects the Franchise... it appears to me that he may indeed not be a Fan of Introducing the Queen concept.

So in AA we have 2X Face Huggers... i think RS will not go the Queen Route, and i dont think he will go the Shoot-em-up route and so we wont see hundreds of Xenos after hundreds of Colonist

I think he will introduce a way to evolve the Protomorph which we can now confirm it is... to become the Bio-mechanical Xenomorph.

So its seems a quite straight forwards Plot... the tricky part is how does those Eggs get onto the Derelict, as David has to obtain one from someplace and i think having Origae-6 being a Engineer World is a Coincidence to big...

RS comments also seem to hint at just being about the Xenomorph and so no no to Engineers.

The Space Jockey will be a Walter build by David from Spare Parts and either this Walter is used to create a Bio-Mechanical Xenomorph... or Walter Sacrifices himself..  Or David transfers his Soul/Mind to Walter and gets Face Hugged.

Prometheus did 30 million in China and 21 million in Japan in 2012.  The Asian markets are the only markets with an increase over Prometheus.  Whether that holds in Japan and China who knows.  It'll do another 10 to 15 million domestic.  Even if you cut China and Japan in half what Prometheus did that puts it around 210 to 215 worldwide.  The break even point seems to be around $240 million that's on the high end.  Optimally it will do the same or more as Prometheus in China and Japan which will put it at around 240 worldwide add Blu-ray on VOD and it will turn in a profit.  Worse case, 210 million worldwide maybe break even after Blu-ray and VOD.  Either way a Sequel is 50/50.

Every time we do these estimates the total gets lower and lower.  I remember after the first week we were all talking 300 to 320 million world wide after it's theatrical run.  After the 2nd weekend estimates went down to $260 to $280. Now we're talking $240 best case scenario.

Can someone fill in some information for me?  Production budget is now set at $97 million.  How are you guys figuring it need to be $240 million to break even?

OH, and BigDave.  Okay, instead David is on the juggernaut with the eggs and an engineer wakes up out of hypersleep (David didn't know one was on the ship).  The engineer wakes up because there is a time limit on how long an Engineer can stay in hypersleep.  I would say the Engineer just wakes up after, like, a couple thousand years.  That way they don't stay asleep forever.  I would hate to go in one of those things if I was an Engineer and there would be a possibility of me never waking up.  EVER.  The reason that a couple thousand years would be used is because of the purpose of that juggernaut.  The settings of auto-wake up can be set to whatever the user wishes.  The question is, what was the juggernaut meant for?  Also, how did David get it?  So, there would be an awesome Engineer and AI fight on this juggernaut on top of David losing his mind!  Instead, David kills himself while the Engineering is in the egg chamber.  The Engineer then gets a facehugger!  He goes back to the pilot chair and tries to destroy the ship because he sees it is full of to much evil to be left intact.  He sends off the warning beacon just in case the ship doesn't explode. (Which it doesn't, since Dallas makes everyone go out there and check it out).  Maybe almost all the time, David is communicating with Earth on the juggernaut.  He is just saying the first thing that comes to his head because he is losing it.  He is not making much sense either, but people in charge at Weyland Corp. overhear and know that there could be a juggernaut on LV-426.  So, someone Weyland would have trusted programs the Nostromo to fly nearby on a mining expedition so that Ash can try and get what he possibly can from this juggernaut.  Ash get's lucky and a xenomorph gets on the ship.  Ah, you know how it goes.

Now I'm starting to sound like Ridley Scott.  I gotta please people with this idea!

I Moon Girl  The reason we use 2 to 2.5 is that's the amount needed to offset the budget, marketing and promotion compared to studio profit. Only the studio knows that, hence the rough estimate of  2.0 to 2.5.  Now the studio basically when it's said and done gets 50% of the domestic gross.  International it drops to about 40% with the exception of China which is 25%.  So if we do the math, lets say they spend $140 million production budget plus marketing and promotion.  It makes 80 million domestic, which the studio gets half of.  Now international it does 180 million to make it simple. So that's $220 million worldwide gross.  They keep 40 million domestic and 72 international that's a total of 112 million the studio keeps.  I would also assume they keep more of the Blu-ray VOD sales but I don't know the percentages on those.  These are all estimates of course only the studio knows how much they exactly spent and what they need to break even

Thanks for that Jafo!

This is not the 1990s. Box office numbers are only part of the revenue stream. VOD/streaming services, physical media sales, and premium channel distribution sales are a huge part of the revenue, and those numbers are not compiled or released publicly.

But the message of the box office numbers is clear: with Covenant the franchise did not win any new fans and it lost quite a few.

Word of mouth killed Alien Covenant.  71% on Rotten Tomatoes is quite good.  The problem is that a lot of your hardcore fanbase didn't like the movie. They made it known they didn't like it.  That trickles down to the general public who are on the fence about seeing the movie.  It's snowball effect from there. 

Jafo I'm not so sure about that. Prior to the release, most fans and youtube channels were still very cautious with their opinions. The box office debut should have been much more impressive. I would say the culprits were one hand the bad memories of Prometheus (for some), and on the other hand the uninspired trailers showing a series of bland characters arriving to an "alien" planet complaining they don't hear the "birds". Been there, done that. And you don't actually need to give bad word of mouth to turn off people. Just tell  them this is David's story and you will turn off 90% of the audience.

With AC I have learned that times are changing with the new generations, culture is not the same, maybe is going to be the end of that big-budget productions not for FOX only, quick soluctions: lower costs, more brain, better screenwriters and less SGI. Other question to add here about 3D format, if I remember well PROMETHEUS was released in IMAX 3D.  Can this be relevant matter to this chaos?

Roger55 More brain, exactly. "Arrival" cost half of "Covenant's" budget and made more money domestically than the amount this movie will make by the end of its theatrical run. But when you have a trilogy you need to have a strong foundation, you need to build up an audience and, most importantly, you need to know where you are going, what's the destination. I don't think Ridley Scott's prequels ever knew where they were going, and its evolution has been even clumsier than that of George Lucas' prequels. Probably now, after two movies, he knows where he wants to take this franchise. But the audience has said: sorry we are not on board. So now, instead of having a last installment that everybody is dying to see like the last Harry Potter or the last Lord of the Rings, we have a movie that is even at risk of ever being made.

I think there should be questions raised about how the budget was spent.

Yes RS makes a beautiful looking film. Fact.

But why spend all this money on elaborate sets if you are not going to acknowledge them.

Fans were in awe of the potential the trailers have

Yet we skip past the city, hall of heads and other remarkable sights without a care for them.

Wasted money and wasted opportunity.

Because 

Looks like Covenant will end it's domestic run just shy of $80 million.  It doesn't have much left in the international run in the markets that it has already opened in.  So it's going to need a big China and Japan showing.  We'll know in a couple weeks if that happens for at least China.  Still Blu-ray and VOD should do well, probably near Prometheus numbers of $40 million. Then you have the merchandising.  In the end overall it should turn a profit.  I would think at that point they would let Scott at least finish the prequel.  He still is a big name director, and maybe he can learn from the mistakes of Prometheus and Covenant.

@ATI - No, I do not bash every movie.  Matter of fact, I highly recommended Wonder Woman.  I also recommend FATF, the last two Star Wars movies and John Wick.

With movies, I view as stinkers, I do not recommend.  I guess you never heard of the phrase, "word of mouth".

I just saw Jafo's response and that is what I was talking about.  Also, perhaps an Alien reboot is possible.   I think that is why the marketing was the way it was because when this was viewed in-house; the execs probably did not like what they saw and thought they could reap more profits in May than August.

Great discussion! Agree colonial soldier that moving up the date could only make things better imo. Throw a ton of marketing at the public and see what sticks. If word had gotten out what a stinker this was to social media before a late summer release I probably would not have bought my ticket, as might others. AC has all the ingredients, to me it just can't tell a story with logical characters to get out of it's own way. A trope filled romp is fine , even mixed with some deep thoughts is again fine. Just add some creativity and tension, ALL WITH SENSIBLE characters.  How Ridley can't see that is just mind blowing and frustrates me that he refuses to see the obvious. What a great looking film though, mostly, and the sound is beyond pimp. A top actor does not want to be subjected to ridiculous lines like Oram had, not without a huge payday. Fingers crossed for the Asian markets to give Covvy a winch pull from the galactic ditch!

I am heading to see the poorly reviews Tom Cruise movie The Mummy in two hours.  I let you know if I felt more entertained in that movie compared to Covenant.