Weekend predictions: Oscar nominees and Miller’s Girl unlikely to challenge Mean Girls

January 26, 2024

Mean Girls

Substantial expansions by Oscar hopefuls and a Jenna Ortega/Martin Freeman psychological thriller probably won’t be enough to topple Mean Girls from the top of the box office chart this weekend. In fact, we will see the same top five as last weekend and the weekend before, unless something performs much better than expected.

Our model thought Miller’s Girl could be a modest success, partly thanks to a lack of competing new wide releases this weekend. Lionsgate hasn’t made much of an effort to promote the film though. In fact, they haven’t even reported a theater count for the film. Our survey of theaters estimates an opening in around 500 locations, which isn’t enough to make much of a mark.

Audience interest is high enough that our model still thinks it could get close to $2 million, but it seems unlikely to challenge for top spot.

Here’s what the model thinks that top 10 will look like.

The biggest wildcard this weekend are the Oscar nominees expanding, or re-expanding, into wide release. The model thinks American Fiction will do the best among them, partly because it’s expanding for the first time. Poor Things could beat it, given it will be playing in more theaters, and also given the fact that it got 11 Oscar nominations (second only to Oppenheimer) compared to American Fiction’s five nominations.

Oppenheimer is expanding wide again, and could easily land in the top 10, as could Killers of the Flower Moon (the third-most-nominated movie this year, with nominations in 10 categories).

Oscar nominations definitely help films at the box office, but how much they do depends on a number of factors, including the range of nominations and how much the film has already earned in theaters. Given their Best Picture nominations and relatively novelty, American Fiction and Poor Things will probably benefit the most this year, but Anatomy of a Fall is also worth looking out for, at least in terms of getting a big bump in earnings.

Last but not least, Bollywood action movie, Fighter arrives in wide release this weekend. It’s doing a little better than half of Pathaan’s opening box office in India. That film opened with $6.9 million this time last year, so something around $3.5 million to $4 million seems possible for Fighter, but we don’t have an official prediction.

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Filed under: Weekend Preview, Mean Girls, Oppenheimer, Poor Things, American Fiction, Anatomie d'une chute, Fighter, Miller’s Girl, Martin Freeman, Jenna Ortega