Weekend predictions: Novocaine the favorite, but Black Bag and Mickey 17 complicate the picture

March 14, 2025

Novocaine

Novocaine goes into the weekend favorite to come out on top at the box office, according to our prediction model, but it has an unusual amount of competition, with Mickey 17 coming out of a chart-topping performance last weekend, and Black Bag also likely to have some cross-over appeal. Novocaine’s “Thursday” preview number ($1.75 million) is encouraging, but we don’t know how much came from previews last weekend, and it will be relying on solid momentum through the weekend and a lot of people choosing it over the other two films.

Since there are so many new wide releases to consider, this will be a week where our analysis charts will do (most of) the talking.

A multiplier similar to Mickey 17 would take Novocaine to around $13 million this weekend. Anything over $10 million will almost certainly give it the weekend win. The big unknown is how much of its preview earnings came from last weekend. When we don’t know, we can only run the model on the number we do have, but $14 million is certainly a high prediction even if the share from last weekend was relatively small. $10 million seems like a good goal at this point.

Black Bag is probably too far off the pace of Novocaine to threaten it for top spot. It will probably appeal to an older audience though, and might have a good run through the weekend. Our model doesn’t think so, but there’s a chance we’ll have three films earning around $9 million, and a (three sided?) coin flip will decide which one tops the chart.

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

As noted above, Novocaine will almost certainly come in lower than $14 million, but it clearly has the edge in the race as of now.

The model’s predictions for The Day the Earth Blew Up and Opus both look on the high side to me, and there’s a good chance the top 10 won’t earn $50 million between them when all is said and done.

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Bruce Nash,

Filed under: Weekend Preview, Mickey 17