Weekend Estimates: Magnificent Seven Rides to $35 Million Opening

September 25, 2016

Sully

The Magnificent Seven will almost exactly match Sully’s debut two weeks ago by posting a $35 million opening, according to Sony’s Sunday projection. To us, it looks as though the film will fall fractionally short of that number, but it should still have the sixth-best September opening of all time (not adjusted for inflation). Those two films alone have given the box office enough of a boost that the industry will wrap up the month in fairly healthy condition.

The opening for The Magnificent Seven is almost exactly in line, after adjusting for inflation, with the $34 million earned by The Equalizer on this weekend in 2014, and isn’t really much different from the starts earned by any of Denzel Washington’s recent outings. 2 Guns earned $27 million on opening weekend; Flight started out with a more modest $24.9 million, but had good legs; and The Book of Eli debuted to $32.8 million back in 2010. Washington is genuinely one of Hollywood’s most consistent stars. Over the past dozen years, thirteen of his fourteen films have earned between $64 million and $130 million at the box office, and the exception, The Great Debaters, was a smaller drama that grossed $30 million on a $15 million budget. This consistency is why Washington is one of only four actors worth more than $10 million per film on our Bankability Index.

Also posting decent numbers this weekend, Storks is set for $21.8 million, per Warner Bros.. Like The Magnificent Seven, this is below expectations going into the weekend, but not bad for a September debut. A few animated films have done better from September releases, most notably Hotel Transylvania, which posted $42.5 million back in 2012, but Storks should have decent legs, particularly since it won’t have much competition until Trolls comes out at the beginning of November.

In limited release, Queen of Katwe and The Dressmaker are both doing good business this weekend. The former is set to earn $305,000 or so from 52 theaters, while the latter will do $180,522 from 36—giving both of them averages between $5,000 and $6,000, which is about enough to warrant expansion. Katwe will go into 1,500 theaters next weekend, which seems like a lot, but with Disney behind it, a place in the top ten is well within reach. One other limited release of note is Generation Startup, which will earn a shade over $6,000 in a single theater.

- Weekend estimates

- The Magnificent Seven comparison chart
- Storks comparison chart
- Sully comparison chart
- Bridget Jones’s Baby comparison chart
- Snowden comparison chart
- Blair Witch comparison chart

Bruce Nash,

Filed under: Weekend Estimates, The Magnificent Seven, Storks, Sully, The Dressmaker, Queen of Katwe, Generation Startup, Denzel Washington