Weekend estimates: Marksman topples Wonder Woman
January 17, 2021
The Marksman will win the battle at the top of the box office chart this weekend, according to studio estimates released on Sunday. The action thriller is projected to earn $3.225 million over the three-day part of the weekend, and Open Road expects it to add another $480,000 tomorrow for a four-day opening of $3,705,000. Its debut is comfortably ahead of our Friday prediction, but a little behind Honest Thief, which earned $3.6 million over its three-day opening weekend back in October. The decline is most likely a reflection of the worsening pandemic conditions over the past few months, but Open Road shared some interesting demographic details that shed more light on how the market is evolving at the moment.
The Marksman’s performance is helped by a strong support from Latino audiences. It’s reported to be doing well in Dallas-Fort Worth, Phoenix, Houston, and Salt Lake City. Remarkably, the top gross comes from the Cinemark Pharr Town Center in Pharr, TX, in the Harlingen-Weslaco-Brownsville-McAllen area on the U.S.–Mexico border.
I noted the surprising strength of the Latino audience back at Thanksgiving, when Croods 2 drew an audience that was 36% Hispanic—an all-time high among films for which we have data. It looks as though that wasn’t a fluke result, and that the Hispanic demographic is the strongest in the market right now. What that means for future releases is hard to say, but it does suggest one area where we might see some early market recovery.
Wonder Woman 1984 continues to chug along, with another $2.6 million this weekend taking it to $35.8 million in total. It now looks virtually certain to end its domestic theatrical run behind The Croods: A New Age, which stays in 3rd place in its 8th weekend in theaters and is just short of $40 million domestically.
In the weekend predictions article, I mentioned that it was worth keeping an eye on News of the World and Promising Young Woman, both of which had PVOD releases on Friday. The conventional pre-pandemic wisdom would have been that their arrival in the home market would cause a significant drop in their theatrical earnings. (For the record, I’ve never entirely bought in to that line of reasoning because there was never much evidence to support it, but that’s a topic for another day.) The weekend estimates actually have both movies beating expectations by around 10%. It’s possible that’s down to increased audiences due to the MLK weekend, but it’s more evidence that the theatrical/home market hybrid approach being taken by Universal (and variations on that theme from Warner Bros. and Disney) is more helpful than harmful to the theaters.
Wonder Woman 1984 has passed $100 million internationally, with Warner Bros. reporting a total of $105.9 million outside North America so far, and $141.7 million worldwide. It will open with a projected $2.6 million in Russia this weekend for a 2nd-place finish in the market, and is holding on well in Australia ($1.0 million this weekend for $16.1 million in total) and Brazil ($392K this weekend for $5.4 million total).
The Croods: A New Age will pick up $2.2 million internationally this weekend for a total of $94.7 million overseas. Its global total is now $134.8 million, with its two top markets this weekend Australia, with $1.116 million this weekend for a total of $12.14 million; and Russia/CIS at $503K, for $11.66 million in total.
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International Markets
Filed under: Weekend Estimates, Wonder Woman 1984, The Croods: A New Age, Honest Thief, Promising Young Woman, News of the World, The Marksman