Weekend estimates: A Quiet Place: Part II has the edge in four-way race
June 13, 2021
However things shake out, there’s a good chance we’ll have four films earn over $10 million at the box office this weekend, which would be a new pandemic-era high if the numbers hold. The less good news is that In the Heights didn’t hit, well, the heights that were hoped for going into the weekend. It did come very close to what our model expected though.
This weekend’s results are actually something of a triumph for the model, which predicted five out of the six films at the top of the chart within 10%, and only missed with Cruella, which is holding a little better than expected.
The model’s prediction for In the Heights and The Conjuring 3 in the chart above are both adjusted slightly from the numbers posted on Friday due to final theater counts that we didn’t have at the time. They don’t make a huge difference to the results, and the big news of the weekend remains the surprisingly weak performance of In the Heights. Most box office watchers were expecting a weekend over $20 million for the musical, and I personally thought our model’s prediction was too low. As it turns out, it was remarkably close.
As I noted on Friday, musicals don’t come out the gate with great numbers unless they are attached to a major brand. Lin-Manuel Miranda is arguably the biggest brand in musicals right now, which elevated expectations for this movie, but some segment of the potential audience either didn’t pick up on the connection or didn’t care, or decided this was a movie they could enjoy on HBO Max. In any case, it looks as though it will come in very close but slightly below our model’s number.
That’s obviously a disappointment, particularly given the hope that it would top $20 million. Given that it falls below our model’s number, the model’s estimate of the share of the normal theater-going audience currently attending shows falls back from 42% to 38%. That number has been hovering around 40% for quite a while, but generally trending higher. Hopefully this will be only a minor backwards step.
Peter Rabbit 2 is also falling a little short of the model’s prediction, although it’s very close again: Sony expects it to hit $10.4 million compared to the model’s $10.8 million. That’ll nudge down the model’s estimate for the family audience back to 48% of normal.
Overall, the top six will earn around $52.7 million this weekend, which is 1% higher than the model’s predicted $52.4 million. Again, what’s good for confidence in the model is not great for confidence in the recovery of the theatrical market. This weekend might be a bit of an aberration though. In the Heights will probably have a long run at the box office if it lives up to the performance of other musicals with strong audience approval. The Greatest Showman ended with a domestic total 11 times its best weekend and La La Land made 10 times its biggest weekend. If In the Heights can do close to that, it would top $100 million by the end of its run. Peter Rabbit could have a long run too, given the longevity of family films.
That would be great, of course. But if we’re to see a theatrical market recovery where we can be confident more than 50% of the old audience is showing up, we’ll need to start to do better soon. For that, all eyes will turn to The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard and F9: The Fast Saga over the next two weekends.
Bruce Nash, bruce.nash@the-numbers.com
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We won’t know for sure until final numbers are reported on Monday, but it looks as though A Quiet Place: Part II will move back to the top of the box office chart this weekend, fractionally edging out In the Heights. The difference in their respective Sunday-morning projections is just $245,000 though, with Quiet Place expected to earn $11.65 million and In the Heights $11.405 million, which is within the margin of error (particularly considering box office is harder to predict for the studios at the moment as market conditions are changing so much). In fact, Peter Rabbit 2 (projected to earn $10.4 million) and The Conjuring 3 (projected for $10.02 million) are technically still in the running for the win, although that would be a big surprise given they’re over a million dollars back on today’s tracking.
Filed under: Weekend Estimates, Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway, Cruella, F9: The Fast Saga, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, In the Heights, A Quiet Place: Part II, The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard, Lin-Manuel Miranda