Weekend predictions: Honest Thief should pull off comfortable weekend win

October 16, 2020

Honest Thief

After last weekend’s surprise win for The War with Grandpa, this weekend is looking a little more predictable, with Honest Thief expected to comfortably top the chart. The overall strength of the market remains very uncertain, but our model is now assuming about 40% of moviegoers are ready to go to theaters, based on Grandpa’s relative strength last weekend. Liam Neeson is a well-known quantity at the box office, and Honest Thief joins a long line of Neeson thrillers, most of which have done very well at the box office. Our model has this new one opening at around $4.4 million.

Although it won’t top the chart, 2 Hearts is going to be an interesting film to look out for on the chart this weekend. The last few weeks have shown that family movies can do quite well in theaters, but this will be the first test for a romantic drama in quite some time. The model expects it’ll do a shade over $1 million.

If the two new wide releases come close to their targets, we should see a nice upwards bump in the combined box office for the top six. The Nightmare Before Christmas is hard to predict, given that Hocus Pocus made $1.925 million two weeks ago, but Coco only managed $603,000 last weekend. The $1 million prediction is basically splitting the difference between those two extremes. Overall, box office could be up by about 20% compared to last weekend.



- Weekend theater counts

Filed under: Weekend Preview, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Hocus Pocus, Coco, The War with Grandpa, Honest Thief, 2 Hearts, Liam Neeson