December 19th, 2021
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After two dismal years for the theatrical business, Spider-Man has returned to change the rules of the game. Again. Back in 2002, the first Spider-Man movie set an all-time record by opening with $114.8 million—becoming the first film to top $100 million at the box office in a single weekend. That was arguably the beginning of the modern era at the box office.
This weekend, Spider-Man: No Way Home may be kicking off the post-pandemic era with a gargantuan $253-million opening. That’s not just the best result of the pandemic. It’s the best by a huge margin, more than doubling the opening of Venom: Let There Be Carnage, which itself significantly outperformed expectations. Even more impressively, it’s the third-best weekend of all time, behind only Avengers: Endgame ($357 million) and Avengers: Infinity War ($258 million). In fact, a good Sunday number would take it into second place on that list.
Oh, and it’s already the highest-grossing film of 2021.
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November 21st, 2021
Ghostbusters: Afterlife is tearing into theaters this weekend with a strong $44-million opening, according to Sony’s Sunday-morning projection. That’s well ahead of our model’s pre-release prediction of $25 million, and comfortably exceeds the model’s prediction based on Thursday previews of $36.2 million. It’s also the studio’s second legitimate hit of the year after Venom: Let There Be Carnage and evidence that their theatrical-only strategy is paying off (even if the total dollars involved are modest compared to the pre-pandemic market).
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November 14th, 2021
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Eternals will, as expected, come out on top at the box office this weekend, but it’ll do so by a healthier margin than expected thanks to a decent hold, and a very slight under-performance by Clifford the Big Red Dog through the weekend. Eternals is set to earn $27.5 million, according to Disney’s Sunday-morning projection, which will take it to $118.8 million domestically. That makes it one of the top 10 films of 2021 already, with quite a way to run.
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October 31st, 2021
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There was something for everyone in movie theaters this weekend, but the combination of Halloween falling on the weekend and too much competition made going tough for the six films either opening, expanding, or being re-issued in wide release. The competition hit Dune a touch harder than our model expected, but it will easily remain the top film at the box office, with $15.53 million taking it to $69.4 million in total after 10 days. With another $21.4 million from international markets, it now has $292.1 million worldwide so far.
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October 24th, 2021
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While Dune isn’t quite living up to the most optimistic predictions, it’s doing enough to be considered a success so far, with Warner Bros. projecting it will earn $40.1 million domestically by close of business today. That includes $9.03 million from 404 IMAX screens, which amounts to 22.5% of the nationwide total—one of the highest opening-weekend shares for IMAX in history. Clearly a segment of the population is keen to see it in all its glory on the biggest screen possible. All told, it’ll do $17.8 million in business from IMAX screens around the world this weekend.
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October 17th, 2021
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Halloween Kills is continuing the good run of results at the domestic box office this weekend with a very solid opening, which Universal is projecting will just clear $50 million. That’s easily ahead of Friday morning’s predicted $41.2 million, and the second-best weekend for the 43-year-old franchise, only surpassed by the 2018 incarnation. It also means a hat-trick of $50-million-plus weekends to start October.
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October 15th, 2021
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Halloween Kills, the 12th installment in the virtually un-killable Halloween franchise, should comfortably top the box office chart this weekend, even it falls well short of the $76.2-million opening weekend earned by its predecessor, simply titled Halloween, back in 2018. It has already banked a respectable $4.850 million from previews in 2,950 theaters on Thursday, and adds another 755 locations today. Here’s what our model has to say about its likely opening, based on what we know so far. I’ll also dig into the prospects for The Last Duel, and see how the weekend as a whole is stacking up.
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October 10th, 2021
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After posting record-breaking preview numbers on Thursday, No Time to Die has shown surprisingly weak legs over the remainder of the weekend, and United Artists is projecting it will earn $56.007 million this weekend. While that’s below what seemed possible as of Friday morning, it’s a very solid number for the pandemic era, and almost exactly the same as our model’s original prediction of $56.8 million. That counts as a victory at the end of the day, albeit one that feels a bit diminished given its strong start. Curiously, by almost every measure, it looks like a film that should have performed well through the weekend, and it might yet prove to have long legs.
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October 3rd, 2021
Venom: Let There Be Carnage will set a new pandemic-era benchmark this weekend, with Sony Pictures projecting a stellar $90-million opening weekend as of Sunday morning, easily eclipsing the $80-million debut of Black Widow back in July. That number also represents a very solid 7.8 times the movie’s Thursday-evening preview number, which suggests good word of mouth. The good news doesn’t stop there, with this weekend’s other domestic openers, The Addams Family 2 and The Many Saints of Newark both doing better than predicted, No Time to Die opening with spectacular (for the pandemic era) numbers internationally, and Dune continuing to do well around the world.
First, here’s how the domestic numbers look this morning…
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October 1st, 2021
A critical month for the theatrical industry has started with some promising news: Venom: Let There Be Carnage posted a very solid $11.6 million from “preview” screenings on Thursday evening, the second-best result from previews during the pandemic, and not far behind Black Widow’s $13.2 million. Sony Pictures, while presumably very happy with how things are going so far, are urging caution when extrapolating that number out to the whole weekend. Their current projection for the weekend is towards the high end of the $50 million to $60 million range, with a preview-to-weekend multiplier around five.
Here’s what our model has to say about Venom’s prospects, along with this weekend’s other new wide releases and returning films…
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September 24th, 2021
Dear Evan Hansen will be taking a long-shot swing at unseating Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings from the top of the chart this weekend. Our model, and the movie’s preview numbers, suggest it’ll fall some way short, giving the Marvel action movie a fourth straight weekend at the top of the chart. That’s the longest continuous run at the top since Tenet dominated the pandemic-ravaged chart in September last year (The Croods: A New Age also spent five weeks at number one, split between December and February, but didn’t have four straight weekends at the top). The limited number of major new releases since Shang-Chi came out is significantly hitting the market as a whole, and this will be the slowest weekend at the box office since Spiral’s $4.6-million second weekend was enough to give it a weekend win back on May 21.
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September 17th, 2021
One of this weekend’s two new wide releases will have to do much, much better than expected to challenge Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings at the top of the chart this weekend. The Marvel movie should come in with something around $20 million (or possibly a bit higher), and there’s a strong possibility that will be more than double the second-placed film. If Cry Macho and CopShop both falter, Shang-Chi might even earn three or four times as much as its nearest competition.
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