Weekend predictions: Black Panther unchallenged at top of chart, The Menu looks like the best of the rest

November 18, 2022

Black Panther: Wakanda Forever will easily win its second box office crown this weekend, helped by a lack of direct competition and the tailwinds of a $181-million opening weekend. Our model thinks $70 million will be around a par score for the Marvel movie, and no new release will come within $50 million of that. Three new films come in with a shot at second place: The Menu, She Said, and The Chosen. Of those three, our model thinks The Menu has the best shot at taking that honor.

Here’s what the model thought of The Menu coming into the weekend:

Black comedies generally start out with fairly modest numbers, with few of them topping $10 million on opening weekend. The Menu has the advantage of excellent reviews (standing at 91% on Rotten Tomatoes right now), and a stellar cast, including Ralph Fiennes, Anya Taylor-Joy and Nicholas Hoult.

In fact, the preview numbers are painting a rosy picture right now…

The preview numbers actually point to an opening weekend more than double the model’s fundamentals prediction, which would be a huge result. Anything over $10 million would be impressive, and it seems likely it’ll hit that number.

Meanwhile, She Said is a much more serious film, but one with similarly high pedigree. The fundamentals model actually had it pegged at opening fractionally above The Menu:

... But the Thursday previews tell a different story.

The main note of caution about the previews is that they tend to be very low for dramas, and the weekend multipliers correspondingly high. So I would take the film’s performance so far with a grain of salt. This is one of those times where combining the fundamentals and the previews predictions is likely to give a more robust prediction, and I’m pretty comfortable with our final number: $4.5 million. This is a film that will have a strong run based on its intrinsic qualities, and could have an excellent run if it picks up awards nominations.

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

Our prediction for The Chosen is based on a comparison with Christmas with the Chosen, which made $4.245 million from 1,700 theaters on opening weekend last year. The Chosen: Season 3 is playing in 2,000 theaters this weekend, and will have the benefit of opening on Friday (the previous film opened on the Wednesday after Thanksgiving), so it has a good chance of doing better than $5 million, and we’re already hearing of ticket sales that should exceed that number.

For Black Panther, the big question is whether good word of mouth and the early effects of Thanksgiving will boost its numbers enough to counteract the fact that its core fan base pretty much all saw it last weekend. I suspect it’ll have a decent hold (the original film fell only 45% in its second weekend), anything under a 65% fall should be considered a victory.

Bruce Nash

Filed under: Weekend Preview, Black Panther, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, The Menu, She Said, The Chosen Season 3: Episodes 1 & 2, Ralph Fiennes, Nicholas Hoult, Anya Taylor-Joy