How Is 'Noah' Tracking?

UPDATED 3/23: Now that reviews are coming in, the conversation surrounding Noah is heating up in a major way. 

Noah has added more than 45,000 likes on Facebook since last Thursday. On Twitter, the epic flick has posted north of 15,000 tweets as of early Sunday morning with an average daily positive:negative tweet ratio of 29.5:1 this weekend.

March 11 Article: 

The first tracking for Paramount Pictures' and Darren Aronofsky's Noah began spreading around the industry on Monday. Today, we look at the film's buzz across the major social media platforms.

On Twitter, the film is pacing well ahead of the same-point pre-release discussion levels of Son of God and Non-Stop by 73 percent and 58 percent, respectively. Unfortunately, Noah has yet to consistently rank among the top ten tweeted films. In its defense, the online sector is only one component of the larger general audience which the pic is targeting.

Interest from the Facebook community is respectable. Noah increased its number of fans by over 29 percent in the last week, giving it a total of 281,199 through March 10. That's short of Son of God's 421,586 fans at the same point, although that film was adding new "likes" at less than half the current pace of Noah. Non-Stop boasted 240,501 fans.

Lastly, Noah is driving strong interest on Flixster. Its 98 percent "want to see" score is encouraging, but the fact that it's coming from nearly 38,000 voters more than two weeks from release is a strong indicator of widespread interest. By comparison, Son of God had a very modest 92 percent score from less than half the number of voters on the day before its release (likely due to its nature as a re-edited version of a TV miniseries).

Set for release on March 28, Noah stars Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Emma Watson, Anthony Hopkins, Logan Lerman, and Ray Winstone. Director Aronofsky (Black Swan) has seen his film at the center of significant controversy in recent months, ranging from what Paramount suggests was a misleading audience interest poll to a studio-enforced disclaimer in front of marketing materials that lets viewers know of the creative licenses taken with the story. Insiders and speculators claim the film suffered some setbacks from test screenings last year due to the interpretation of Noah's story straying from Biblical accuracy. Ultimately, however, Aronofsky's version seems to have (mostly) won out for the final cut.

In response, current box office expectations aren't near the level of Mel Gibson's controversial The Passion of the Christ ($83.9 million opening weekend) in 2003, but they remain ahead of Son of God ($25.6 million). The BoxOffice team recently lowered its domestic forecast, and we think the safest current barometer is probably that of Robin Hood (also starring Crowe), which opened to $36 million domestically back in 2010 before totaling $105 million (plus an additional $216.5 million overseas). Noah's star power and scale should also make for a healthy overseas performance when it opens in most of its scheduled territories between the end of March and mid-April.

The latest trailer (below) is introduced by Watson and shows off the aforementioned disclaimer around the 1:30 mark.

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Stay tuned to BoxOffice for further updates and analysis on Noah's global box office outlook in the weeks ahead.

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