Weekend predictions: can Taylor Swift outdo Barbie?

October 13, 2023

TAYLOR SWIFT | THE ERAS TOUR

Crowds are packing theaters again this weekend in numbers we haven’t seen since the Summer. Specifically, since Barbie and Oppenheimer combined for one of the biggest one-two punches in movie history. Audience demographics might be remarkably similar this weekend as TAYLOR SWIFT | THE ERAS TOUR hits theaters. Will we see the same kind of result? Who will win the Swifty/Barbie battle?

I have no idea.

Actually that’s not quite true. I have a couple of ideas. The first comes from our usual box office prediction model:

The key number here is the one at the bottom: 385%. That’s the audience buzz that we’re measuring for this film compared to similar previous concert movies. To put that number in context, it’s almost off the charts. Almost, but not quite. Barbie had an audience buzz figure running around 700% compared to its comparable films. What we’ve learned since Barbie is to trust the buzz more than the comps. In other words, once a film becomes an event, knowing how similar films have performed isn’t a good way to predict performance.

This is the moment when I would usually hone our prediction with the benefit of Thursday’s preview numbers. I’m not able to do that this week because of the unusual nature of the previews. They were announced just a couple of days ago after most superfans had already bought tickets, and not all theaters played them. Our model would be looking at those $2.8-million in last-minute ticket sales as pointing towards a weekend around $30 million. We already know domestic pre-sales for this weekend exceed that figure. In other words, the preview number really tells us nothing about how the weekend will turn out.

One final tidbit might be of interest though. At this point on its opening weekend, our model thought Barbie would hit $131 million for the weekend. THE ERAS TOUR is predicted to do a little less than that. If we assume our model is consistently inaccurate, we probably won’t see a record weekend for 2023. But it feels like it’ll be a close run thing, and $150 million seems on the cards.

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

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Filed under: Weekend Preview, Barbie, Oppenheimer, TAYLOR SWIFT | THE ERAS TOUR