Weekend predictions: Freaky set to stay top as theaters suffer from new pandemic shutdowns

November 20th, 2020

Vanguard will attempt to dislodge Freaky from its perch atop the domestic box office chart this weekend. Even though the new release stars Jackie Chan and earned around $45 million in its native China, our model thinks it’ll struggle to do so. But that skirmish is a sideshow this weekend as theaters are taking another blow from the surging pandemic and related lockdowns. More...

Weekend estimates: Tenet leads lackluster weekend

September 27th, 2020

This was never going to be a weekend for the record books, but the estimates released on Sunday morning reveal a theatrical market that’s barely clinging to life. With no major new releases, Tenet will win by default, but its $3.4 million projected weekend is down 28% from last time around, and the market as a whole looks as though it has weakened by about 20% in the last seven days. The biggest new release of the weekend is almost certainly Break the Silence: The Movie, which is rumored to have opened with around $1 million, putting it in a tie for third with Unhinged. The New Mutants remains in second place, with Disney projecting $1.147 million for the weekend. More...

Weekend predictions: movies are showing better legs during the pandemic

September 24th, 2020

Disney’s announcement earlier this week that it is moving its upcoming MCU releases into 2021, starting with Black Widow taking over Shang Chi’s previous slot on May 7, was a body-blow to the theatrical business. October’s release schedule is now looking very thin indeed. November isn’t looking much better, and there’s a high probability that at least one of No Time to Die, Soul, and The Croods: A New Age will slip from their current planned release dates.

This weekend has four films technically opening wide: the re-release of The Empire Strikes Back, Shortcut (an Italian horror movie from Gravitas Ventures, opening in around 600 locations), and two movies honoring Ruth Bader Ginsberg, On the Basis of Sex and RBG. However, all of them are such special cases that they don’t fit our prediction model. Instead, I’ll focus on a rare piece of good news: films currently playing in theaters are showing better week-to-week legs than was the case before the pandemic. More...