Weekend predictions: Wrath of Man and Here Today take a shot at leading duo

May 7, 2021

Wrath of Man

Two new wide releases, Wrath of Man and Here Today, enter the fray this weekend, and will be hoping to capitalize on the rapidly-declining audiences for Mortal Kombat and Demon Slayer to take them to the top of the chart. While Here Today has the least overlap with the other films audience-wise, our model thinks Wrath of Man will fair the better of the two on debut.

Here’s what the model has to say about each movie…



Before a single moviegoer saw the film, Wrath of Man already set a record for the pandemic era. It’s the first film that’s playing in more theaters on opening weekend than our model would predict. Based on the releases of comparable films like The Gentlemen and Mechanic: Resurrection, the model would expect this film to open in around 2,258 theaters. So its actual theater count of 2,875 is a pleasant surprise. Under normal circumstances, we’d be looking at an opening around $10 million. With our model still believing only 37% of moviegoers are currently going to theaters, its adjusted prediction is $3.7 million.

If we are beginning to see a more enthusiastic return to theaters, something closer to $5 million is doable. Anything over $4 million would boost the model’s confidence that the industry is getting back on track. For me, this is the bell-weather movie this weekend.



Here Today is a tougher film to predict. It is billed as a comedy-drama, which is genre we haven’t seen in wide release in quite a while. According to our categorization, a few have come out during the pandemic in around 500 theaters (Our Friend, The Climb, Kajillionaire), all of which posted modest results. The Personal History of David Copperfield debuted in 1,360 theaters, and also didn’t earn much. But all those films were bravely going against the tide while the majority of theaters were closed. Here Today could be the harbinger of brighter things to come if it manages to come up with a decent performance.

What’s working strongly against it is the weakness of the market for “date night” movies, which the model estimates are drawing around 16% of their usual audience. Here Today seems like that kind of film. If it is, then a weekend just under $1 million would be about par for the course, and that’s the benchmark I’ll be looking for, personally. The model’s $1.87-million prediction assumes it’s more of a regular movie, which is because we aren’t classifying this as a “romantic movie.” That’s a bit of a technical distinction, and if this film underperforms, I’ll adjust our categories to combine romantic movies and comedy-dramas into a broader date-night category.





All of the above machinations lead to the model predicting that Demon Slayer will narrowly stay top this weekend, with Mortal Kombat and Wrath of Man close behind. Slightly weaker performances from the returning films, and a modest out-performance by Wrath of Man is all it would take for the order to be reversed. If the theatrical market is continuing to recover, look for a win for the Guy Ritchie / Jason Statham action movie. That’s who I’d be betting on going into the weekend.

Filed under: Weekend Preview, The Gentlemen, Our Friend, Mortal Kombat, Here Today, Wrath of Man, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba—The Movie: Mugen Train (劇場版「鬼滅の刃」 無限列車編), Guy Ritchie, Jason Statham