Weekend predictions: Croods looking likeliest winner in a close race

February 19, 2021

The Croods: A New Age

With no new releases this weekend, the race for number one at the box office comes down to which film among the top three last weekend has the best legs. The overwhelmingly likely answer to that question is The Croods: A New Age, which enters its lucky 13th week in release doing almost exactly the same business as it was two months ago. The only unknown is how well Judas and the Black Messiah will do in its second weekend.



Our model says that The Croods should bring in around $1.89 million this weekend, fractionally down from last weekend. As I’ve said over the last few weeks, this film is the best barometer we have for the overall health of the market. An up week for The Croods would be a strong sign that the market is strengthening, particularly since we’re coming off a long weekend. Even a modest decline would be a positive sign, given that this should be a down week and it’s been playing for such a long time.

The model isn’t very bullish on the chances that Judas and the Black Messiah will pull off a surprise weekend win. Second weekend drops have been running around 50% during the pandemic and anything close to that will leave the film well behind The Croods. Maybe some word of mouth and Awards Season buzz will help it do better than that, but anything close to $1.5 million would be an impressive result.

In fact, the model has The Little Things moving up one place to second this weekend. It will almost certainly fall short of The Croods, but should add another $1.69 million or so to its tally.

Overall we’re looking at another down weekend at the box office due to the lack of new releases. I’ll be looking closely at the total for the top six closely when the estimates come in on Sunday though. Anything less than a 25% decline in combined box office would be a good sign, although something steeper isn’t out of the question coming off the long weekend.

Filed under: Weekend Preview, The Croods: A New Age, The Little Things, Judas and the Black Messiah