Weekend predictions: Half Brothers, All My Life unlikely to challenge Croods

December 4, 2020

If 2020 has taught us anything it’s that nothing is certain in life. But one thing we can be fairly confident about this weekend is that The Croods: A New Age will remain top at the box office. Universal’s animated adventure does have some new competition. In fact, there are three new wide releases: Half Brothers (in 1,369 theaters), a re-release of Die Hard (1,172 theaters), and romantic drama All My Life. But those three films combined are unlikely to challenge Croods, and individually they are likely to be far behind it.

Half Brothers will likely be the strongest new release, with our model putting its weekend somewhere around $1.4 million. It’s a difficult film to predict because it is likely to appeal to Hispanic audiences, which have been surprisingly resilient during the pandemic, but we don’t have many recent films to compare it to. It’s particularly unusual in that it is debuting in 1,369 theaters, which is much more than normal for a Hispanic-targeted film. Focus Features is clearly hoping to reach a broader audience, and that relatively high theater count increases the prediction substantially. If it doesn’t cross over, then it could fall short of $1 million. This is a release that is honestly very to predict.

All My Life is easier to run a prediction on because it falls into a more well-established market segment. Romantic dramas are fairly solid performers at the box office in normal times, but have really struggled during the pandemic. With a launch in just 970 locations, All My Life is likely to come in well below $1 million this weekend, and the model expects a $560,000 weekend.

Die Hard is Disney’s latest classic re-release, and will be looking to tap in to its new-found reputation as a Christmas movie. I won’t get drawn into that debate, but I will say that our model is souring on these re-releases as they appear to be getting diminishing returns each week. Frozen only scraped together $120,000 over Thanksgiving from 1,367 theaters. Die Hard is playing in 1,172, and the model thinks it’ll earn around $310,000. That won’t be enough to put it in the top six.

Speaking of which…

The market as a whole is likely to fall quite steeply from its Thanksgiving peak, most because of Croods’ second-weekend decline. Unless Half Brothers or Die Hard perform surprisingly strongly, Croods will likely be the only film earning over $1 million for the weekend, which shows just how weak the market is now. This time last month, four films earned over $1 million at the weekend. That looks positively healthy compared to where we are now, and things are about to get even worse, with no new wide releases in the next two weeks that might help boost earnings.

- Theater counts: The Croods still the widest release in its second week

Bruce Nash

Filed under: Weekend Preview, Die Hard, Frozen, The Croods: A New Age, Half Brothers, All My Life