Weekend projections: Civil War stays top on slow weekend

April 21, 2024

Civil War

Civil War will top the box office chart this weekend, holding off solid openings from Abigail and The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, with all three films landing close to our model’s Friday-morning forecast.

Here’s how the weekend numbers look as of Sunday morning (click on the image for the full chart of films reporting so far)…



Civil War’s second weekend hold—it’s off 56% from its debut—is slightly better than expected, and a sign that it is getting decent word of mouth. Our model now expects it to finish with $67.5 million domestically, which will make it A24’s second-highest-grossing films behind Oscar winner Everything Everywhere All At Once. That’s a major victory for the distributor, given how tricky this film was to market.

Abigail’s opening is solid for a standalone horror movie, although slightly behind what we expected going into the weekend. Its reviews are good, and it’s earning a B from CinemaScore, which is high for a horror movie. While it can’t be considered a “hit” yet, it could have a decent run in theaters for a film of the genre.

The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare will land in fourth place, and a little behind what our model predicted on Friday. However, its $9-million-or-so debut is well ahead of industry expectations going into the weekend, and Guy Ritchie’s best opening since The Gentlemen’s $10.6 million back in 2020. The Netflix TV show based on that movie has probably added to Ritchie’s fan based here in the US, and helped boost the number. It’s hardly a blockbuster result, though, and the film will need strong international earnings to make back its reported $60-million production budget.

The final film of note this weekend is Spy x Family Code: White, which will end the weekend substantially ahead of our Friday prediction. $4 million is still not a great result for a anime title, especially given the excellent reviews and audience score for this film. Perhaps it will get enough word-of-mouth support to enjoy a longer run that is typical for anime.

This weekend’s aggregate number from all films playing sits at $62.9 million. That will increase tomorrow when we get final numbers for all films playing, but it’s a disappointing number for this time of year. Next weekend—with a re-release of Alien, belated debut for Challengers, and faith-based drama Unsung Hero—is unlikely to see things pick up much. After that, all eyes will turn to The Fall Guy, which is tracking strongly, but will need to break out substantially to put the market back on track.

- Studio weekend projections
- All-time top-grossing movies in North America
- All-time top-grossing movies worldwide

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Bruce Nash,

Filed under: Guy Ritchie