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Tracking Kick Ass, The Day Before US Release

Right now, Bleeding Cool is being slammed by Argentinians trying to find out where Kick Ass is showing near them. How do I know this? Because Bleeding Cool is the top search engine result for "Kick Ass Domestico"

Anyway. I have the tracking figures for Kick-Ass, opening in the US tomorrow.

And I can't simply share them with you as mean old Nielsen went and um, very reasonably pointed out that they own the figures. Or certainly the chart. But if I editorialise, then that's fair use…

Okay, Kick-Ass had been trailing on the awareness levels. And it's still not great. Big films open with 90%+ awareness levels, and Kick-Ass just doesn't have that, an overall awareness of 72%, peaking in males under twenty-five at 81%. Whereas the less high profile movie Death At A Funeral has awareness levels of 83% and much less variance across gender and age demographics. However, Kick-Ass does have a relatively high definite interest rate of 40%, peaking at 53% for those under twenty-five males, crashing down to 25% for over-25 year old females. That kind of high variance can kill a film, especilly when the female demographic has greater say in deciding what film a group sees.

In comparison, the remake of A Nightmare On Elm Street out at the end of the month already has an overall awareness of 81% and a definite interest of 31% and it still has two weeks more of marketing activity. Iron Man 2 coming out next month has 92% awareness and 64% definite interest. A day before release, Clash Of The Titans had 88% interest and 53% awareness. And Date Night had 81% awareness and 41% definite interest – which is very close to Kick-Ass – except Date Night did better with women and had less variance. On that basis alone, given the female decision factor, on weekend opening, Kick-Ass can't do better than Date Night, which opened at number 2 with a weekend gross of $25,000,000.

On thgese tracking figures alone, Kick-Ass should come in at around the $22,000,000 mark in US takings. Now, Lionsgate paid $50,000,000 for the movie, there has been a lot of marketing costs on top, and it would need to double all that to recoup its money… can Kick-Ass do it? I mean, probably yes, but how quickly?

What Kick-Ass is going to need is word-of-mouth. Now I've seen audiences roar with laughter at this movie and talk it up. It's still doing well at the UK box office two weeks after launch. But will America respond in the same way?

Let's find out together!

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