Twitter Box Office Update

Total tweets for November 13th Openers

2012 finished off the week in style, getting a massive 7,346 tweets, 108.40% more than its Wednesday total of 3,525. This percentage increase was good for number 2 since September, trailing only Saw VI 's 126.32%. Considering this isn't in the horror genre (which generally has much large Thursday increases than other genres due to the popularity of midnight shows), is a much larger total number of tweets, is not a sequel and has a large proportion of positive tweets is a very good sign for 2012 .

Its performance today was slightly ahead of my Wednesday estimate of 15,000 tweets as it ended up with 16,025 on the week. I'll bump up my ratio estimate slightly to 800 for a $20 million Friday, and a $54 million weekend. There is little doubt that it is going to break out given this level of interest. It is also a great experiment in terms of tweet tracking blockbusters, something that will surely come in handy over the holidays and into Summer 2010.

Pirate Radio had a very respectable 1,095 tweets on Thursday, an increase of 74.64% over Wednesday. My estimate of 2,300 total tweets was close enough as it finished with 2,421. Like 2012 there really is a skimpy record of similar films in my tweet database, but the closest is still Amelia given its slim theatre count and older appeal. I think Pirate Radio will have more of a younger appeal than Amelia which should drive its ratio up slightly. Expect a 1,750 ratio and a $1.35 million Friday and about a $3.8 million weekend.

Please check back on Saturday for a recap on Friday's numbers and analysis of the resulting ratios.

Below is the full chart for my Twitter tracking history.

The ratio is the number of tweets per $1 million of Friday Box Office gross. A film with 1,000 tweets and a $10 million Friday would therefore have a ratio of 100. In general, films that appeal to very young or older audiences have lower ratios since those audiences are not big users of Twitter. By comparison, films that appeal to younger audiences (18-35) have much higher ratios since those audiences are much more active users of Twitter.