Twitter Futures – Full steam ahead for ‘Captain America’

Friday Morning Update: Make it a cool five out of six week atop the Twitter leaderboard heading into its release week for Captain America: Civil War. Its 402,520 tweets over the last week put it a long ways ahead of Deadpool’s 326,090 tweets over the same period before its release as well. Other comparisons that come to mind are Captain America: The Winter Soldier which had 220,592 tweets, and Avengers: Age Of Ultron which had 325,348. All signs point to a massive explosion here, and with the early reviews having it as the strongest film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe since the very first Iron Man (second overall with 93% fresh as I type this) it would appear as though its going to be able to pair a massive opening with a strong run over the beginning of the Summer blockbuster season. $200 million appears to be a lock with upside as it could very well be the largest opening (and grossing) film of the entire Marvel franchise to date.

X-Men: Apocalypse used a new trailer on Monday to vault it back into the top 5, accounting for 72,320 tweets. Luckily for it there are three weeks between it and Captain America and should have a minimal impact on its chances. The last trailer for X-Men: Days Of Future Past had just over 45,000 tweets so the bump here is a welcomed sign for sure for Fox.

Snowden put itself on the map this past week as well with its first trailer which had 30,885 tweets on Wednesday. Best comparison I can think of is The Fifth Estate which had 10,564 back in July of 2013. Fifth Estate was largely shunned by audiences and critics alike, and the question many have is if Snowden will be able to capture a wider audience. Early marks are high based on the level of buzz but I am curious to see how subsequent trailers will perform before decoupling it from Fifth Estate in terms of my perceived potential. I should also note that though Oliver Stone is a highly acclaimed director he’s never had a film open to more than $19 million or make more than $75 million.

Twitter Top 10 Movies for the week of April 22nd to April 28th

Date Movie Tweets Rank Change
5/06/16 Captain America: Civil War 402,520 1 (-) 108.01%
5/27/16 X-Men: Apocalypse 131,721 2 (+6) 517.10%
8/05/16 Suicide Squad 58,904 3 (-1) -28.29%
7/15/16 Ghostbusters (2016) 43,504 4 (-) 26.17%
9/16/16 Snowden 40,162 5 (+49) 5780.23%
6/24/16 Independence Day: Resurgence 19,107 6 (+41) 1223.20%
6/03/16 Me Before You 17,785 7 (+6) 48.28%
11/04/16 Doctor Strange 17,525 8 (-1) -18.69%
12/16/16 Rogue One: A Star Wars Story 16,964 9 (+3) 19.57%
6/17/16 Finding Dory 14,146 10 (+6) 56.21%