We’re still pretty convinced that we were lucky in projecting the opening weekend John Carter movie sales.  We don’t know how external things, like the weather, other competing movies, and overall demographic targets can impact box office receipts. But we’re learning and we can continue to refine our models as we get further into it.

For now, we have tons of data on the upcoming Hunger Games release and we’re happy to share our current (if amateur-ish) insights. First, we can look at the overall sample of responses we collected from late February until now. Based on 9,528 respondents, weighted to the US Census, we see that 24% of respondents plan to see the movie in theaters, with 10% expecting to go this weekend.

But these numbers only tell part of the story. If we look at only the first three weeks of data collected, we see that earlier respondents were slighly less inclined (N=7,770).

People who plan to see the new Hunger Games

But then let’s look at people we reached in the past week. It would appear that the final marketing push around the film has significantly moved the numbers of people who plan to see Hunger Games in theaters “eventually.” (N=1,764)

People planning to see the new Hunger Games

OK. So if our past formula was any indication, viewing these numbers relative to the Lorax and John Carter movie numbers, then the Hunger Games should do about $113.75M at the box office this weekend. That would put it among the top 15 highest-grossing opening weekends ever. We’ll see how close we are OR we’ll see how much more work we have to do on our models. Stay tuned.