Weekend estimates: The Conjuring’s $24-million opening may be the best evidence yet that box office is recovering
June 6, 2021
Here are the numbers reported so far (note that as of this writing we don’t have an official estimate for Wrath of Man, so I’ve used the estimate posted by Deadline).
The Conjuring’s $24-million debut is almost twice what the model predicted, and would be considered a respectable result under normal circumstances. The model’s estimate is that 74% of its usual audience came out to watch the film, which is the second-best performance for any film we’ve analyzed during the pandemic (only Wrath of Man did better on opening weekend, relatively speaking).
The strong performances of A Quiet Place and Cruella last weekend (both films drew 68% of their expected audience) could be put down to chance (the model’s not perfect, after all) or to the Memorial Day weekend (which the model doesn’t adjust for). Without Memorial Day clouding the picture, and three consecutive general-audience movies doing better than expected, we can be more certain that the theatrical business is coming back.
The one fly in that ointment, is Spirit Untamed, which will make around $6.2 million this weekend compared to a predicted $7.88 million. As I mentioned on Friday, that film’s very specific target audience (younger girls) and competition from several other family films meant it would have a challenge breaking through. Its performance is close enough to the prediction for Universal to be happy, I think.
This weekend’s new releases will move the model’s estimate of moviegoers currently attending theaters a small amount. The general audience is now estimated at 42% of usual, up from 37% going into the weekend. That’s the highest that number has reached during the pandemic. The family audience estimate falls very slightly to 49%, down from 50%.
The general upswing in numbers is evident from the top six bringing in a projected $63.5 million this weekend, down 18% from last weekend, but the second-best number of the pandemic. Both A Quiet Place and Cruella beat the model’s prediction, and the market as a whole came in 33% above the predicted figure. That’s in line with what we would expect to see during the peak recovery phase for total box office earnings. The next few weekends should tell us a lot about where the market is headed, but (almost) all signs point to recovery at the moment.
Bruce Nash, bruce.nash@the-numbers.com
Going into this weekend, it looked as though The Conjuring would have an uphill battle to top the weekend chart. The last film in the The Conjuring franchise, Annabelle Comes Home, opened with $20.3 million in the halcyon days of June, 2019, and it’s been five years since The Conjuring 2 made $40.4 million on opening weekend. With some theaters still closed in North America and a big chunk of the traditional theater-going audience yet to return, our model predicted it would earn somewhere in the region of $10 million to $15 million this weekend. Even with a steep decline, A Quiet Place: Part II was favored to retain its crown. The studios’ weekend projections, released this morning, tell a different story—one that’s very encouraging for box office watchers.
Filed under: Weekend Estimates, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, A Quiet Place: Part II, Spirit Untamed, Wrath of Man, The Conjuring