Weekend estimates: Let Him Go tops expectations with $4 million opening

November 8, 2020

Let Him Go

Let Him Go is pulling off a comfortable win at the box office this weekend, according to studio projections released on Sunday morning. Its $4.1-million opening is the third-best result during the pandemic, behind Tenet’s $20.2 million and The New Mutants’s $7.0 million, and slightly ahead of Unhinged’s $4.0 million, assuming the final numbers hold on Monday. While this is undoubtedly good news, which pushes the total for the top six close to $10 million for the first time in a while, the evidence points towards this being more a case of one film connecting with audiences rather than a significant market improvement.

To see why, let’s dig into the results for the other returning films. Come Play is, as expected, falling quite steeply from last weekend, down 45% to a projected $1.73 million, and a total so far of $5.662 million. The War with Grandpa will actually increase by 19% from last weekend to $1.5 million or so, most likely because family audiences are returning to theaters after trick or treating last weekend. Tenet will also be up slightly (2%) to $905,000 for the weekend, and has now earned $55.1 million domestically. The other films in the top six are disappointing though: Honest Thief will be down 18% and fall just short of our prediction, most likely thanks to direct competition from Let Him Go. Finally, Toy Story is falling short of our model’s expectations with $505,000.

Add that all up, and we have one film (Let Him Go) significantly out-performing expectations; two films (The War with Grandpa and Tenet) doing modestly better than predicted; one film (Come Play) landing right on target; and two films (Honest Thief and Toy Story) falling a little short. There’s perhaps a faint sign that the general market is improving, and our pandemic adjustment (which estimates the proportion of moviegoers willing to go to theaters) has been inching higher over the past couple of weeks. Two weeks ago, it stood at 33%; going into this weekend it was 34%; and the performance of Let Him Go will nudge it up to 36%. That is as likely to be statistical noise as a real change, and it’s a little surprising that the market would improve as the pandemic conditions get worse, but it is at least holding steady, and maybe headed in the right direction. The performance of Freaky, which comes out on Friday, will tell us more.





Tenet will earn another $2.1 million globally this weekend for a worldwide total of $350.8 million. The domestic market is comfortably its best again, with $905,000 million taking it to $55.1 million in total. It’ll earn $359,000 in Japan for $24.9 million there, and $190,000 in its second weekend in Brazil, for a total of $609,000. Its best territory globally is China, with a total reported gross of $66.4 million.

- Weekend studio estimates
- Weekend predictions
- Weekend theater counts

Filed under: Weekend Estimates, Toy Story, The New Mutants, The War with Grandpa, Come Play, Honest Thief, Tenet, Let Him Go, Unhinged, Freaky