Weekend predictions: Black Panther will break November record, but maybe not the $200-million barrier

November 11, 2022

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever earned $28 million from previews on Thursday, the 15th-best preview figure in history, and notably higher than the $25.2 million earned by the original Black Panther back in 2018. That sets it on a path to break the record for the biggest weekend in November, currently held by The Hunger Games: Catching Fire with $158 million, but our model thinks topping $200 million will be a hard task.

Here’s our model’s analysis of the potential opening weekend for Wakanda Forever based on its pedigree, theater count, and audience interest:

Note that there’s no market strength adjustment for Black Panther, because the model thinks that market strength doesn’t apply to this film—like Spider-Man: No Way Home (and, it turned out, Top Gun: Maverick), this looks like a film that people are really eager to see even if they’re not in the habit of going to theaters at the moment. This is a rare category, and the only remaining film coming out this year that won’t have a market strength adjustment is Avatar: The Way of Water.

At the beginning of the week, our audience tracking and expected theater count pointed towards an opening of $170 million, but the final theater count for the film, while prodigious, is a bit lower than expected. I doubt this is the result of a lack of enthusiasm among theater owners (my local theater has fifty-one showtimes for Black Panther today, for example), but perhaps some selective scheduling by Disney? Or is this the result of theaters closing since the Summer? That’s something I’ll be looking into after the holidays, I expect.

In any case, the preview numbers from Thursday suggest the model was underestimating the popularity of the film by a little, but not by a huge amount…

Disney pointed out in their email this morning that previews aren’t fantastically predictive of opening weekend. That’s a fair point, but they are still quite useful. Looking at the films above, the opening weekend for a film like this almost always lies between five and eight times the Thursday preview number. That tells us Wakanda Forever is almost certainly headed for between $140 million and $224 million, and will probably land somewhere in the middle of that range. It would need legs like Captain Marvel or the original Black Panther to top $200 million, and note that those films both introduced major new characters, which tends to produce a higher multiplier. So something around $180 million seems quite likely, but much more than that would be a sign of great word of mouth for a film like this.

All in all, $173 million seems like a good prediction for this weekend, although I’ve a hunch the film will do a little better. Doctor Strange 2’s $187.4 million (the best weekend of 2022 so far) is under threat, but that record may not fall.

Here’s what our model thinks the top 10 as a whole will look like…

This weekend really is all about Wakanda. There are two other films I’ll be taking a close look at on Sunday morning. Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile has had a remarkable pick-up in business over the past week, which could turn into a lengthy run into the holidays (or peter out as other family films open around Thanksgiving). The Banshees of Inisherin, meanwhile, has a shot at crossing over from an art-house favorite to become a mainstream hit. It’ll need a great hold this weekend, but further expansion for that one can’t be ruled out.

Bruce Nash

Filed under: Weekend Preview, Black Panther, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile, The Banshees of Inisherin