Hobbit box office predictions

[Emmie]

Ridiculous to talk about this 3+ years before release? Perhaps. But let's make some predictions on how the first Hobbit movie will fare in the box office.

My personal initial guess is somewhere around Two Towers levels. People who aren't Tolkien fans may not be as interested in the idea of a prequel, because I think people are less interested in prequels in general and it's also sort of hard to imagine anything more epic than the trilogy - but, to balance this out, there are probably a significant number of new people who have watched the movies since they were released.

Lord of the Rings box office numbers, for reference:

Fellowship:
$314,776,170 domestic (US) gross
$870,761,774 worldwide gross (including US)

Two Towers:
$341,786,758 domestic
$925,282,504 worldwide

Return:
$377,027,325 domestic
$1,119,110,841 worldwide

[MithrilBox]

Way too soon to even guess. :p

[PiRaTeGiRl]

I can't even imagine... I mean, the fans should see those movies for sure. But, I don't know how it will be successful on those who didn't watch lord of the rings, or maybe have not read those books at all.

[FairyFruit]

$375,000,000 domestic
$1,100,000,000 worldwide

Sometime in 2012 I will probably regret posting this, haha. We should start another thread to revise our predictions once we've already seen the first Hobbit movie.

[jimmyboy]

$375,000,000 domestic
$1,100,000,000 worldwide

Sometime in 2012 I will probably regret posting this, haha. We should start another thread to revise our predictions once we've already seen the first Hobbit movie.
That's a pretty reasonable guess.

I'm going to be a bit more ambitous and say that the first one will break 400M domestic. This is mostly because there are (I'm guessing here) far more fans after Jackson's movies than there were before. So there's already a much bigger fan-base who will be awaiting these new movies. Opening night will be a record-breaker.

The second one's much more tricky. "Always in motion is the future", as Yoda said. And this one will depend more on how well the first one does. If the first one is a total dud* then it will likely hurt the second one.

(* Remember Star Wars: Episode I. It turned out to be much less of a movie than many older fans had anticipated, though that didn't seem to affect the turnout for the following two Episodes. But again, that's likely because after Episode I, many of the younger generation became fans, who weren't previously, so it had effectively created a new and large fanbase. But that's a whole separate discussion.)

[Emmie]

Didn't want to start a new thread, but there's an article that includes The Hobbit box office speculation here: The Record-Breaking Pace Of 'Avatar' Continues... So We Look Ahead To What Could Top It (http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2010/01/11/the-record-breaking-pace-of-avatar-continues-so-we-look-ahead-to-what-could-top-it/#more-27621)


There's a lot going for "The Hobbit," starting with the previous success of Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. All three of those movies were mega-hits, with third entry "Return of the King" even picking up a Best Picture Oscar, a rare occurrence for this sort of fantasy spectacle-fueled blockbuster. Jackson is still involved as a producer, which means that we're returning to his previously established vision of Middle-earth. "The Hobbit" is also a more family-friendly tale, at least based on how the book is written, and so it could conceivably draw in the valuable under-13 audiences.The Hobbit may well earn over a billion globally, but it seems kinda unlikely that it would overtake Titanic. Avatar would depend on exactly how much it ends up making, but since it's already at ~1.35 billion it seems semi-unlikely too.

[Sam]

I think that it will knock Return of the King off the top but wont come close to Avatar.

[Lanyare]

Gaaah, I'm very bad at estimating. Off course, I hope it'll do better than any other movie, because it deserves to. :D