Weekend predictions: Argylle set for weekend win, but falling well short of its potential

February 2, 2024

Argylle

Argylle will almost certainly end this weekend at the top of the box office chart, but it looks as though it will struggle to live up to its potential. After posting just $1.7 million in previews on Thursday it will need to come storming back over the next few days to reach a respectable opening number. The Chosen: Season 4, Episodes 1–3 wasn’t far behind yesterday, earning $1.4 million on its first day in theaters. While it isn’t expected to have the legs to challenge Argylle, it should at least land a decent opening in the top 10.

Argylle has the pedigree to open with well over $20 million, although action comedies have had mixed results in the past couple of years…

The main concern going into this weekend is how weak the market is at the moment, with the model thinking it’s running at about 50% of its potential. If that number is right, we’d expect Argylle to open with around $12 million. Our pre-release audience tracking thought it should come in quite a bit higher than that, resulting in a predicted $18.4-million debut before the preview numbers came in.

Unfortunately, the preview numbers are weak. In particular, they are quite a bit lower than The Beekeeper managed on its way to a $16.6-million opening a few weeks ago.

Our final model ends up with a predicted opening weekend of a shade over $12 million. There’s a chance the film could do quite a bit better than that, and in particular the performance of Matthew Vaughn’s Kingsman: The Golden Circle, which earned 11.48 times its previews over opening weekend, gives some room for optimism. The bottom line, though, is that we’re looking at a weekend that’ll hit $15 million at best, and could yet struggle to get over $10 million.

One data point should always be treated with caution, but if Argylle does debut with $12 million, that will increase our model’s confidence that the market is currently running at about 50% of normal. Weather, the upcoming Super Bowl, and the lack of big releases goes some way to explaining that, but it’s a worrying number as we near the mid-point of the first quarter.

Meanwhile, The Chosen: Season 4, Episodes 1–3 has much lower ambitions, with an opening around $5 million or $6 million being the rough goal. Note that in the analysis below, I’ve used unadjusted numbers for each comparable film because all of them were released recently. That means that there’s no market strength adjustment.

While we don’t have a really good comparison to this new installment’s Thursday release, it does give us something of a pointer towards how the weekend will look. Right now, things look a little on the soft side, but it’s early days.

The model ends up with a predicted weekend around $4 million. That sounds in the right ballpark, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the final number comes in a bit higher.

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

Holiday holdovers still feature prominently on the chart, with The Beekeeper the only release from 2024 to be showing real legs so far. It will be creating some competition for Argylle, which may explain the new film’s weakness so far.

The good news is that we should have a slightly stronger weekend than last time around, but we’re still looking at a very disappointing market as we go into February.

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Filed under: Weekend Preview, Argylle, The Beekeeper, The Chosen: Season 4 Episodes 1-3, Matthew Vaughn