Weekend estimates: Nobody maintains market momentum

March 28th, 2021

An excellent opening for Nobody is more than making up for sluggish results for returning films this weekend and keeps the market recovery on course. More or less. More...

Weekend predictions: Freaky could be a pandemic-sized hit

November 13th, 2020

One of the curiosities since theaters started to reopen in the late Summer and early Fall is that the movies being released have not really targeted the demographic one would expect to be most likely to actually go to theaters: people in their teens and twenties. Instead, we’ve mostly seen thrillers, which tend to skew older, and family movies, which obviously skew younger. The most obvious exception to this rule is The New Mutants, which opened with $7 million back in August. This weekend, Freaky is looking to pull off a similar result. If it over-performs, it has a shot at beating Mutants, and having the second-best opening of the pandemic era. More...

Weekend estimates: Let Him Go tops expectations with $4 million opening

November 8th, 2020

Let Him Go is pulling off a comfortable win at the box office this weekend, according to studio projections released on Sunday morning. Its $4.1-million opening is the third-best result during the pandemic, behind Tenet’s $20.2 million and The New Mutants’s $7.0 million, and slightly ahead of Unhinged’s $4.0 million, assuming the final numbers hold on Monday. While this is undoubtedly good news, which pushes the total for the top six close to $10 million for the first time in a while, the evidence points towards this being more a case of one film connecting with audiences rather than a significant market improvement. More...

Weekend estimates: Honest Thief wins weekend with $3.7 million

October 18th, 2020

Honest Thief will top the domestic box office this weekend with a $3.7 million opening that is in line with expectations, and provides more evidence that the theatrical business is at least stable in the United States. Relatively good numbers for the re-release of The Nightmare Before Christmas bolster that argument, although 2 Hearts is underperforming hopes. Overall, it’s a story of two steps forward, one step back. More...

Weekend estimates: The War with Grandpa pulls off surprise win

October 11th, 2020

Although the theatrical market is still in the doldrums, The War with Grandpa is providing some welcome good news this weekend with a surprise win. 101 Studios is projecting $3.608 million for the weekend, which is more than double our prediction, and wouldn’t be a particularly surprising result for a film like this from a new distributor under normal circumstances. Its performance raises some interesting questions about what films will and won’t work in theaters at the moment. More...

Weekend estimates: Tenet still top, reaches $300 million worldwide, Hocus Pocus surprises

October 4th, 2020

The best that can be said about this weekend at the box office is that a movie is doing better than expected. However, to put that in perspective, the movie in question is a re-release of a film that opened in fourth place back in 1993, and earned four times as much on its original opening weekend (when ticket prices were less than half what they are now) as it did this weekend. The movie, of course, is Hocus Pocus, and its $1.925 million weekend is a welcome surprise for a film that will presumably be drawing more of a family audience than the other films in release right now (Disney has not reported any demographic information for the film). More...

Weekend estimates: Tenet leads lackluster weekend

September 27th, 2020

This was never going to be a weekend for the record books, but the estimates released on Sunday morning reveal a theatrical market that’s barely clinging to life. With no major new releases, Tenet will win by default, but its $3.4 million projected weekend is down 28% from last time around, and the market as a whole looks as though it has weakened by about 20% in the last seven days. The biggest new release of the weekend is almost certainly Break the Silence: The Movie, which is rumored to have opened with around $1 million, putting it in a tie for third with Unhinged. The New Mutants remains in second place, with Disney projecting $1.147 million for the weekend. More...

Weekend estimates: Infidel posts solid opening, under the circumstances

September 20th, 2020

It looks as though we’ll have another down weekend for total domestic box office, with perhaps $11 million in combined ticket sales for all movies, compared to $12.3 million last weekend, but there are a few small grains of good news to be found. Infidel topped (very modest) expectations, with a projected opening of $1.5 million, and the four other films still playing in wide release that have reported so far all had relatively good holds by historical standards. Tenet hit the $250 million mark worldwide, but Mulan continues to struggle.

Here are the details… More...

Weekend estimates: Mulan posts disappointing $23.2 million opening in China, Tenet crosses $200 million worldwide

September 13th, 2020

The return of major new theatrical releases in the United States is great news for the industry, but this past few days have shown just how tough it will be to recover from the effects of the pandemic. After Tenet’s seemingly not-too-good, not-too-bad opening last weekend, two studios revealed what they really thought at end of the week, with Warner Bros. pushing Wonder Woman 1984 back to December 25, and Universal shifting Candyman to sometime in 2021. Clearly business isn’t good enough (yet) to support movies that could be very profitable under normal circumstances.

Warner Bros. and Universal do earn some credit for sticking with a theatrical strategy for the films, at least for now. Disney, meanwhile, have (amongst other things) been criticized for releasing Mulan on Disney+ here in the United States, and didn’t get the best of news this weekend for their international theatrical strategy, as the film rolled out in China with a modest $23.2 million.

New numbers for Tenet, and an opening weekend estimate for The Broken Hearts Gallery also give us new insight into progress in the domestic market.

Here’s a round-up of the weekend numbers released so far. More...

Weekend prediction: The Broken Hearts Gallery

September 10th, 2020

With theaters slowly reopening in North America, albeit with significant capacity restrictions, and new releases returning to theaters after a long, lonely, Summer, we thought it was time to take a look at our weekend predictions. Traditionally, these have been compiled through a combination of research and judgment, much like the predictions you’ll see on many web sites, trade publications, and newspapers. While our predictions have always stacked up well compared to everyone else, going forwards we wanted to do something that more closely embodies the ethos of The Numbers: providing objective, data-based analysis of the movie industry.

I’m pleased to announce our new weekend previews, which will be based on a model we’re developing that uses our huge database of movie box office and metadata to predict the weekend box office for movies currently playing in theaters. The prediction model debuts this week with an analysis of Sony’s The Broken Hearts Gallery, and we’ll be refining and expanding the model and predictions over the weeks to come. More...

Weekend Estimates: Tenet Debuts to $20.2 Million Domestically, Heads to $150 Million Worldwide

September 6th, 2020

On an historic weekend for the movie industry, the two biggest releases of the year so far are going head-to-head in a battle to win over audiences using very different strategies. Tenet is making its debut in theaters domestically, after posting a very respectable $53 million internationally last weekend. Mulan, meanwhile, is making its debut as a Premium VOD release on Disney+ where the streaming service is available, and in theaters in other markets.

Warner Bros. is reporting $20.2 million from 2,810 locations domestically for Tenet “through the Labor Day holiday weekend” (which presumably means including previews and projected grosses for Sunday and Monday), and another $58.3 million internationally, for an international total of $126 million and a global cume of $146.2 million so far.

Disney is claiming a strong opening for Mulan in a handful of small international markets, with $5.9 million for the weekend. The real action for that movie is online, of course, for which no figures have been reported, or are expected.

Here are the details to date. More...

Weekend Predictions: Tenet Set to Tame a Chaotic Box Office

September 2nd, 2020

The chaos that is 2020 continues this long weekend. Usually Labor Day marks the official end of the summer blockbuster season, but in 2020 up is down, left is right, and the Canucks still haven’t been eliminated from the Stanley Cup playoffs. With all of this turmoil, it kind of makes sense that the first summer blockbuster getting released this year, Tenet, is coming out on the last weekend of summer. It is the only wide release of the week, and, while The New Mutants and Unhinged will still be in many theaters, they simply won’t be able to compete with Christopher Nolan’s latest epic. More...

Weekend Estimates: New Mutants Posts $7 Million Opening

August 30th, 2020

Although the war for survival of the theatrical business is only beginning, The New Mutants is at least winning a small early battle by posting an opening weekend that is in line with expectations. In fact, the film will exactly hit our pre-weekend prediction of $7 million, according to Disney’s Sunday morning projection.

Beyond the top-line number, signals are mixed. Mutants’ theater average of $2,903 is better than Unhinged’s $2,206 last weekend, but its box office fell on both Saturday and Sunday, suggesting poor word of mouth. Unhinged itself is down 35% from last weekend, even though it gained an extra 508 theaters. The other new releases were weak (although what a joy to see something new). More...

Weekend Predictions: A Slate of New Releases

August 28th, 2020

For the first time since March, we have multiple wide releases this week, or to be more accurate, multiple semi-wide or wider releases. The New Mutants is the biggest new release of the week, playing in 2,412 theaters, and it is looking to top Unhinged’s $4 million result from last week. Bill and Ted: Face the Music is opening in more than 1,000 theaters, but it is also playing in PVOD, so its theatrical chances are more questionable. The third wide release of the week is The Personal History of David Copperfield, which has the best reviews, but it also has by far the quietest buzz. More...

Weekend Wrap-Up: Unhinged Begins to Pry Open the Box Office

August 25th, 2020

For the first time in what feels like years, a film earned more than $1 million at the box office over the weekend. The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run had a shot last weekend, but we had to wait for Unhinged’s American debut for this milestone to be surpassed. The film made $4 million in 1,823 theaters for a two-week total of $5 million, including its run in Canada. More...

August Preview, Part 1: Will This Be the Month for a Major New Release?

August 1st, 2020

It has been a long time since we’ve seen a theatrical release from a major studio in North America, but that grim record may finally change in August. While there are only three major releases still on the calendar, and things remain in flux, it seems likely that at least one of them will open on their current release date.

That assumption is based partly on Warner Bros.’ decision to go ahead with Tenet’s release on September 3, and United Artists’ release of Bill and Ted Face the Music in theaters and VOD on September 1. With theaters steadily opening internationally, the pressure to release new films has become too great, even while the pandemic continues to rage in the United States. Even if expectations are very low domestically, it makes sense to start releasing films that have some international appeal, can lure moviegoers back to theaters in small numbers in the US, and then can make back more money from domestic video releases.

In the first part of this month’s preview, we look at the films that are lined up to open in August. Tomorrow, we’ll analyze what it’ll take to get box office earnings close to normal, and how long we can expect that to take, at least in countries that are bringing the pandemic under control. More...

The New Mutants Trailer

January 6th, 2020

X-Men horror movie starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Maisie Williams, Charlie Heaton, Henry Zaga, and Blu Hunt opens April 3 ... Full Movie Details. More...

The New Mutants Trailer

October 13th, 2017

Superhero horror movie starring Anya Taylor-Joy and Maisie Williams opens April 13, 2018 ... Full Movie Details. More...