Weekend predictions: Honest Thief set for second weekend win

October 23, 2020

Honest Thief

Honest Thief has some theoretical competition at the box office this weekend, but the marketing for The Empty Man has been negligible, and its 2,027 theater count is not enough for there to be much chance that we’ll see a change at the top of the chart. The lack of new films also points to a down week at the box office overall, at a time when the industry could desperately do with some good news.

The rollout of The Empty Man has been remarkably half-hearted, even by current standards. A 90 second trailer was quietly posted a week ago, and there’s been virtually no advertising for the film. The fact that it was made in 2018 is also a clue that the studio didn’t know quite what to do with it. It’s an unfortunate fate for a horror movie that tries to be a little different, and that clearly isn’t a good fit for Disney, which came to own it when they bought 20th Century Fox. The studio has done the absolute minimum to fill its contractual obligation to release it in theaters, and many moviegoers will know little to nothing about it if they venture to theaters this weekend. The fact that its trailer portrays it as a by-the-numbers supernatural horror film, and the film itself tries to be something different probably won’t help much either.

This backdrop to the release is unfortunately invisible to our model, which in this case looks for non-franchise R-rated horror movies as comparable films. To produce a realistic estimate, I broke a rule by including an additional specific adjustment for this film, which reduces expectations by 25% due to the fact that the film is being unceremoniously dumped into theaters. I try to avoid adding these kind of tweaks, but I think it’s defendable in this instance. If we get more films in the future that have no trailer two weeks before their release, I’ll use the same adjustment, unless The Empty Man blows past expectations (which frankly would raise a question about whether studios should bother doing any advertising at all).



The overall weekend is looking very weak, and we’re looking at a 20–25% drop in total box office for the top six. Honest Thief is unlikely to be challenged at the top, and The War with Grandpa and Tenet seem very likely to stay second and third. The re-releases of Monsters Inc. and The Addams Family should be around fifth and sixth place. We now have enough data to at least take a stab at predicting the opening weekend for classic film re-releases—basically around $500 per theater—but what films do and don’t work remains something of a mystery. If The Nightmare Before Christmas does a little better than expected, it could make the top six, although it is losing 580 theaters this weekend, which suggests Disney thinks it’ll trail off rapidly.



- Theater counts: The Empty Man debuts but Honest Thief stays on top

Filed under: Weekend Preview, Monsters, Inc., The Nightmare Before Christmas, The War with Grandpa, The Addams Family, Honest Thief, Tenet