Weekend estimates: a 3-way tie for number one
February 14, 2021
The combination of a long weekend and a very tight race means it’s hard to say who’s winning at the box office this weekend. Universal is claiming bragging rights, with a $2.04 million three-day estimates for The Croods: A New Age. It is set to earn around $2.66 million including Monday’s holiday gross. Warner Bros. is projecting $2.0 million over three days and $2.4 million for the long weekend for both its new release Judas and the Black Messiah and the returning The Little Things. (The studio didn’t originally announce a three-day number for The Little Things, but just confirmed that $2.0 million figure with us.)
Outside of this minor intrigue at the top of the chart, this week’s estimates contain some promising news…
While Judas and the Black Messiah is falling a little short of our prediction, every other film is beating our number, some by healthy margins. In particular The Little Things and Wonder Woman 1984 are coming in strong: 55% above our model’s prediction, and 43% higher respectively. The Croods is not only 21% up from last weekend, but 39% higher than our what our model expected too.
Those extra dollars for returning films means we’ll see a 39% increase in combined box office for the top six films, which is 15% higher than expected. Under normal circumstances, we’d put down that increase to the long weekend and Valentine’s Day perking up movie going. That’s undoubtedly a factor, but it’s a stronger result than we saw over MLK weekend, which was up 24% compared to the previous weekend, and 13% compared to our model’s prediction. New Year’s Day weekend beat our model by 7%, meanwhile.
All this adds up to what looks like the beginning of a more hopeful trend at the box office. Market conditions are still dreadful of course—according to Warner Bros.’ tracking, “only ~45% of Domestic cinemas are currently open at limited capacities (representing ~70% of the box-office), with closures still impacting major markets (including Los Angeles, New York City, San Francisco, San Diego, and much of Canada).” But the remarkable week-to-week performance of The Croods, which will earn more in its 12th weekend than it did in its 5th tells us that there’s most likely a steady trickle of people returning to theaters. Clearly the floodgates haven’t opened, but we have evidence that sentiment is improving.
Also notable in this respect is the opening weekend for Land, which Focus Features is projecting at $940,000 over three days and $1.07 million over four. As I noted in our weekend predictions article, it is facing stiff competition and appeals to a demographic that hasn’t been showing much appetite for going to theaters recently. I said on Friday that anything close to $1 million should be considered a victory, and the film has managed to pull that off.
Bruce Nash, bruce.nash@the-numbers.com
-1-News.jpg)
Filed under: Weekend Estimates, Wonder Woman 1984, The Croods: A New Age, The Little Things, Land, Judas and the Black Messiah