Weekend predictions: F9 favorite to win weekend

July 2, 2021

F9: The Fast Saga

Two films that couldn’t be more different arrive in theaters this holiday weekend. The Boss Baby: Family Business is a classic family-friendly animated comedy adventure that’s trying to draw in parents and their children. The Forever Purge is an action horror movie targeted at everyone in between. With F9: The Fast Saga returning after a blockbusting opening last weekend, there’s something for everyone playing in movie theaters this weekend. While F9 is favorite to win, all three films could do good business, according to our model.





The Boss Baby: Family Business is the follow-up to 2017’s The Boss Baby, which opened with $50.2 million. That’s right in line with Universal’s normal opening for a high-profile animated film, but both films in the franchise, for whatever reason, have opened in closer to 3,500 theaters than the 4,000+ footprint enjoyed by the studio’s other animated features. The model dings Family Business a bit for that, and then adjusts expectations down further because only about half of the normal audience is currently going to family films.

So the benchmark for this one is $20 million, but remember that it should beat that figure if the market is recovering. The long weekend also complicates matters, and note that our prediction is for the Friday to Sunday portion of the weekend. For my money, the question is whether it can beat Cruella’s $21.5 million 3-day opening over Memorial Day weekend to record the best weekend for a family film during the pandemic era. My hunch is that it will, although it might be tight.



For The Forever Purge, the model can rely on the comparative performance of the other films in the franchise. With the exception of the most recent outing, The First Purge, which opened on a Wednesday, these films have clustered around $30-million debuts. Even The First Purge earned $31.3 million by the end of its first weekend, although it posted a total of $13.9 million between Tuesday and Thursday at the beginning of a 5-day July 4 weekend in 2018 and only $17.4 million over the Friday to Sunday portion of the weekend.

This latest outing will get the widest release in franchise history, at 3,051 theaters, but the model of course adjusts its box office prospects down, resulting on an opening expected to be just short of $15 million. Assuming some continued market recovery, topping $15 million looks very doable.





Neither of the openers is expected to top F9 this weekend, with the model predicting the action tentpole will earn around $31 million. There is a small chance that The Boss Baby 2 could end up on top, but it would require that film to substantially outperform the model’s expectations and F9 to drop like a rock. Stranger things have happened, but this looks like a fairly safe weekend win for Vin Diesel and the gang.

Filed under: Weekend Preview, Cruella, F9: The Fast Saga, The Boss Baby: Family Business, The Forever Purge, Vin Diesel