Facebook Watch: ‘Now You See Me 2’ Tops

Monday Evening Update: Now You See Me 2 is really starting to kick start its marketing efforts and with numerous trailers floating around it once again caught the imagination of Facebook this past week where it had the largest like increase of any upcoming film. The success of the first film ($350 million worldwide) has surely vaulted this sequel’s levels of anticipation amongst fans worldwide. By comparison, the first film had 200k total likes on opening day whereas part 2 has managed 450k likes in 2016 alone so far.

Fox’s X-Men: Apocalypse fell just short of a threepeat atop the leader board this past week as it managed second with 94,581 new likes. By comparison, X-Men: Days Of Future Past had just under 120k new likes at this same junction before its release.

The Conjuring is another hopeful sequel hoping to cash in on the goodwill of its predecessor. Horror sequels especially can be hit or miss and with its first film being such a massive success but with an excellent release date and a dry run for horrors in general at the box office (the 2016 opening record to date is The Forest’s $12.7 million) all signs point to go.

Warcraft extended its string of top 5 appearances on this list to three as it added 56,567 new likes on the week. At this current pace it will be at over 1.5 million likes before release which is an impressive number for a net new Facebook movie page. While it was from a different era, Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time had just 232,377 likes on the eve of its release. Its assumed that much of the game’s active fanbase will turn out to support the film, but it will need everyday moviegoers who have zero idea about the MMORPG juggernaut turning out to see what it has to offer to become a success. Unfortunately this has been a stumbling block for virtually every video game adaptation to date outside of Tomb Raider and Resident Evil.

Alice Through The Looking Glass rounded out the top 5 with 44,855 new likes. Buzz for the film has been very scant in 2016 with just 150,000 new likes coming in the last three months. Considering that other big winners in the family-friendly genre such as Zootopia, Jungle Book and even Angry Birds all managed more than that it is somewhat worrying, especially since Alice should ostensibly play better to older adults. Cinderella comes to mind as an apt comparison since it too had a massive Facebook like base (12 million+ likes for its page from before the movie was announced), but that had an impressive 900k new likes leading up to its release which far dwarf’s Alice. It would appear as though its having a hard time connecting with non-family audiences which could greatly limit its overall chances.

Facebook Top 10 Movies by Like Increase for the last week Ending Sunday May 15th