1. Could this Franchise Become Universal’s First Billion Dollar Baby?

2. Furious 7  Traditionally delayed openings indicate problems with production, storyline, early tracking numbers.  Furious 7 suffered from a different delay  Death of a major star in the film and franchise  How did the delay impact the outlook for the film initially?  Philip Seymour Hoffman – Mockingjay Part 1  Heath Ledger – impacted the Dark Knight  Brandon Lee – The Crow  Robin Williams – Nightmare at the Museum 3  James Gandolfini – Enough Said

3. Universal’s Choices  Shutdown production and not resume  Tweak the script, review usable film and restart production at a later point with a delayed release date (original July 11, 2014) … WHY??  Massive popularity of the street racing franchise AND the death of actor Paul Walker in November 2013  Fast and Furious 6 generated $788.7million worldwide during the Summer of 2012

4. Universal Strategies  Director chose NOT to kill Paul Walker’s character, Brian O’Connor, even in light of fan expectations  Incorporate unused clips from previous films and Furious 7 completed footage  Use Paul Walker’s brothers as stand-ins for the actor  Let Dwayne Johnson be the “Rock”  Previews requested that the ending not reveal Paul Walker’s character’s fate

5. Unique Aspects of the Film  Simultaneous sequel to two previous Fast and Furious films  New director, James Wan, from the horror genre (The Conjuring, Saw)  Trend of increasing the length and intensity of the action sequences

6. Universal Results  Worldwide gross the largest for an April opening at $384m  Widest release in Universal’s history 4,003 theaters domestically  10,500 screens in 63 territories excluding Russia, Japan and China slated to open later  Previous April record holder was Captain America: Winter Soldier at $95M in 3928 theaters

7. Why IS Furious 7 a Success?  Paul Walker  Established fans and others will want to come see the resolution of the character and the Paul Walker storyline  Vin Diesel  After the death of Paul Walker, Vin Diesel became one of the most liked FB celebrities with 87 million fans currently. He now has creative control of the franchise following Tokyo Drift’s weaker b.o.  Social Media  FB, YouTube, Twitter, and InstaGram footprint all well oiled machines  Diversity  It’s far more than a car movie!

8. Social Media and B.O. Predictions B.O. Prediction MoviePilot $135M Facebook  Movie Pilot Studies  Social Data and Box Office trends  Can Digital Data Accurately Predict Success and monitor marketing effectiveness?  Vin Diesel 87 million likes  Franchise 54 million likes  With remaining cast 300M+ likes … without looking at remaining social media options  100 million views of the trailer within 48 hrs. (271M total)  Above avg Buzz of.56%

9. Additional Social Media YouTubeTwitter  18 million views of trailer in first 48 hours  135 million total YouTube views of trailer  Logged more than one million tweets prior to opening  Massive tweet counts helped overcome a more average search volume

10. Social Media and Predictions  Transformers: Age of Extinction  Opened to $100M  Half the twitter volume  Slightly higher search results  Guardians of the Galaxy  Opened to $94.3 million  319,000 tweets  382,000 searches

11. Social Media Tracking

12. Digital Data  FB fan numbers are a good indicator of fan awareness  Even months before the release  Fan counts particularly important for films with younger audiences  Older target audiences will have lower fan counts  PTAT (People Talking About This  More precise but fickle number, heavily driven by content strategy and media spending

13. Social Media  YouTube trailer counts are important for measuring early awareness  Buzz ratio percentage of unique viewers on YouTube that have “liked” the video and given it a thumbs up  More than 40 million views means mainstream box office domination  Lacking solid view numbers a very bad sign  Were the views bought or organically driven?

14. Social Media  Twitter  Good real time indicator of excitement and word of mouth, coming closer to release or following PR stunts  Mainstream, comedy and horror do particularly well on Twitter around release dates  Assess hashtags and last seven days of search!  Search  Solid indicator of intent moving towards the release date as search titles aware of and are thinking about seeing  Particularly strong with family titles and fan driven franchises  Wikipedia traffic a conclusive proxy for Google Search volume

15. Fast and Furious Franchise  Success of Soundtracks  Music cues the emotions in the film AND pumps up fans for the film release  Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth’s “See You Again” #1 on iTunes (1.2x Mark Ronson’s Uptown Funk)  Video includes tribute to Paul Walker  Building momentum of the series even in light of the absence of Vin Diesel from films 2 and 3.

16. Product Placement  Dodge  “The franchise has been good for Dodge and Dodge has been good for the franchise”  Dodge sold 600,000 cars in 2014 for about 4% of the market.  96% not buying Dodge  Product placement puts Dodge in front of the consumer!  6500 Dodge Challengers sold in March. This was their biggest month ever  707 hp HellCat street racing model.. Stopped taking orders because can’t keep up with orders