Weekend predictions: Dream Horse unlikely to trouble the top six

May 21, 2021

Dream Horse

With Memorial Day weekend looming over the market, along with its two big new films, Cruella and A Quiet Place: Part II, this will be a quiet weekend at the box office. In fact, to borrow a well-worn phrase, perhaps too quiet.

Dream Horse is the only new wide release this weekend, and (as we will see in a moment) it isn’t expected to do a huge amount of business. Spiral, last week’s number one, didn’t do spectacular business on opening weekend and should see a sharp decline. With everything else in the top ten either coming off a weak debut or pretty much played out, we could see one of the worst weekends in the past couple of months.

Here’s what the model has to say…



Dream Horse falls into the “date night” category of film that’s been doing so poorly during the pandemic. This is a film with some potential cross-over appeal as a family movie, though, so the model may be underestimating its chances somewhat. If it does draw in some families, it could end up closer to $1 million this weekend.

Even though it might not be a big earner, this might be an interesting film to keep an eye on over the next few weeks though. It’s the sort of film that could have good word of mouth and it won’t have a lot of direct competition. If we start to see people returning to theaters in more significant numbers, this is the type of film I would expect to benefit.





With Dream Horse looking like it’ll have a modest debut, the top six is likely to be unchanged from last weekend. Unfortunately, that spells considerable trouble at the box office. If the top six can only manage $12.35 million between them, we might be looking at a combined total for all movies somewhere between $15 million and $20 million, and there’s a chance we’ll see our worst weekend since February 19–21, which was the weekend before Tom and Jerry was released. That would be a dismal way to lead into Memorial Day weekend.

I cannot emphasize enough how important Cruella and A Quiet Place: Part II will be for the future of the recovery of the theatrical market. For this weekend, anything better than dismal would be a bonus.

Filed under: Weekend Preview, Cruella, A Quiet Place: Part II, Tom and Jerry, Spiral, Dream Horse