Weekly Unaided Awareness Chart – THUNDERBOLTS* Continues To Impress, SUPERMAN Rebounds

About Unaided Awareness: “What upcoming movies are you aware of?” Each week, we ask thousands of people this simple, open-ended question. The results are what we call unaided awareness. It’s unaided because we don’t provide a list of films, artwork, or descriptions. The respondents have to know about the film on their own. Unaided awareness is highly correlated to box office performance. The thinking goes that if someone can name a film off the top of their head, chances are they want to see it. Because it is unaided, the numbers tend to be small but mighty. 

The Weekly Unaided Awareness Chart includes any film more than six weeks from release, registering at least 1% unaided awareness (UA). Early signs of UA more than six weeks out often translate to box office success upon release.

After the Super Bowl, we declared THUNDERBOLTS* the big winner when its unaided awareness jumped from 1% to 4%. Yes, JURASSIC WORLD: REBIRTH saw bigger gains, rising to 5%, but as a non-sequel, THUNDERBOLTS* was the one most in need of a jolt.

This week, THUNDERBOLTS* reached 5% unaided. That’s quite an impressive number for a film eight weeks before release. By comparison, CAPTAIN AMERICA: BRAVE NEW WORLD sat at 3% at the same point. Does this mean Thunderbolts will top the $89M opening for CAPTAIN? Not necessarily. Given that CAPTAIN is a more known property, at least in the film space, it’s not entirely apples to apples. But, it does mean that THUNDERBOLTS* is looking much healthier than two months ago when it was tracking to open near $50M.

Aside from THUNDERBOLTS*, it was a nice rebound week for several films. SUPERMAN bounced back from 3% to 4%, while MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE – THE FINAL RECKONING and THE FANTASTIC FOUR: FIRST CLASS returned to 3% after sitting at 2% last week.

Two end-of-year tentpoles hit new highs. WICKED: FOR GOOD climbed to 3% while AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH reached 2%. Both are likely to be regular guests through the fall. 28 YEARS LATER took quite a tumble from 1% to not even making the Bubbling Under chart. Speaking of, THE ACCOUNTANT 2 spends another week percolating outside the 1%, while M3GAN 2.0 falls below 0.75% for the first time in over a month.

Elsewhere, SNOW WHITE scored the highest unaided for the second week in a row, rising from 7% to 8%. MICKEY 17 arrived in theaters with 5% unaided.