Tweet counts and analysis for Friday, July 9th.

Twitter Watch: 'Despicable Me' All Set To Rule

on July 09, 2010 by Alex Edghill
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Friday Morning Update: In what was quite a reversal, Predators put the sword to Despicable Me on Thursday as it vaulted ahead for the first time in the week. Despicable Me actually dropped 15% on Thursday to 5,387 tweets and a market share of 5.5%. Tuesday and Wednesday figures for the film had a large amount of additional buzz thanks to the retweets and meme from the last trailer (as I spoke about here), so the drop yesterday was likely it falling back towards its otherwise normal buzz levels. Regardless, 5,000+ tweets for kiddy targeted film is still very impressive.

Despicable Me Comparisons

  Movie Mon Tue Wed Thu Total Friday Ratio
9/18/09 Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 385 542 524 831 2,282 $8.10 282
12/11/09 The Princess And The Frog 678 756 973 1,574 3,981 $7.02 567
3/5/10 Alice In Wonderland 12,001 14,449 17,743 39,765 83,958 $41.00 2,048
3/26/10 Hot Tub Time Machine 1,299 1,744 1,834 3,245 8,122 $4.55 1,785
3/26/10 How to Train Your Dragon 1,167 1,701 1,698 2,433 6,999 $12.20 574
5/21/10 Shrek Forever After 2,025 1,939 2,201 3,904 10,069 $20.75 485
6/18/10 Toy Story 3 13,389 12,288 17,346 21,510 64,533 $41.00 1,574
7/09/10 Despicable Me 1,534 4,029 6,388 5,387 17,338    

The fact that Universal was quite actively trying to raise awareness on Twitter is alone a big boost in its numbers, but even excluding that its numbers have been exceptional. The film has connected with many young users of Twitter and its clips and trailers have really made the rounds and generated a lot of buzz when compared to many other recent animated films.  Even in giving it the same ratio as Toy Story 3 would put it north of $10 million for Friday, and the circus around the film hasn't been on the same level. My prediction remains unchanged from yesterday, look for a ratio of ~1,300 and $13 million for it on Friday on its way to $36 million for the weekend.

Predators had the final laugh on Thursday as it pounded Despicable into second place on the day with 8,881 tweets and 9.0% market share. This was a steep rise from Wednesday's 4,657 tweets and 4.4& market share. Couple points of note here: the movie also opened in a ton of countries on Thursday, a fact which no doubt boosted its totals. The most notable of which is the UK which is the most tweet-happy English speaking location outside of North America. Also, franchise scary flicks such as this tend to have strong midnight showings, and standing in line for a film and tweeting seems to go hand in hand nowadays.

Predators Comparisons

  Movie Mon Tue Wed Thu Total Friday Ratio
10/16/09 Paranormal Activity 15,321 11,827 9,291 10,290 46,729 $6.70 6,974
11/06/09 The Box 222 398 644 1,132 2,396 $2.85 841
11/06/09 The Fourth Kind 515 752 873 1,570 3,710 $5.00 742
1/8/10 Daybreakers 830 1,152 1,312 1,836 5,130 $5.90 869
1/22/10 Legion 612 671 986 1,621 3,890 $6.70 581
4/30/10 A Nightmare on Elm Street (2010) 2,318 2,977 4,304 6,244 15,843 $15.80 1,003
6/04/10 Splice 387 752 1,215 1,587 3,941 $2.70 1,460
7/09/10 Predators 1,623 1,866 4,657 8,881 17,027    

Its surge on Thursday has actually left it ahead of Nightmare On Elm Street but I do believe its ratio will come out being a lot higher thanks to the above mentioned facts and that with a much higher profile cast more attention is being drawn to the film from many avenues. With these factors in mind its ratio should hit very close to the 2,000 mark for a $9 million Friday and a $23 million weekend.

Top 10 Upcoming Movies for Thursday June 17th

Film Buzz Positive Buzz Negative Buzz
1 Predators 8881 1985 488
2 Inception 5466 1478 146
3 Despicable Me 5387 1933 200
4 Vampires Suck 3844 1312 277
5 The Social Network 1095 85 15
6 Scott Pilgrim vs. the World 1060 259 30
7 Machete 734 143 12
8 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part I 696 137 12
9 Charlie St. Cloud 681 266 28
10 Salt 668 179 19

No its not a typo, The Sorcerer's Apprentice is yet to crack the top ten even thoguh it is just a week from release. It was sitting at #12 with 510 tweets yesterday. It has been struggling big time despite a very simple name to track down tweets. The buzz just isn't there.

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.

Tags: Despicable Me, Predators
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