Weekend predictions: Summertime gets into full swing

June 11, 2021

In the Heights

It’s beginning to feel like Summer in movie theaters as a combination of a musical, two kids movies, a family movie, and two horror films will make up the top six and fill up movie theaters this weekend. After three films topped $10 million at the box office last weekend, we could see four films manage the feat this time around, and In the Heights is expected to top $20 million by the trackers (although, as I’ll discuss in a moment, our model isn’t as bullish). The new releases should be enough to keep the total market flat or possibly slightly growing.





In the Heights is a tough film for our model to get a handle on because there are so few good comparable films. In terms of pure head-to-head comparison, The Greatest Showman, La La Land and Cats come closest. Of those, La La Land had a very long rollout, not reaching its widest release until its 8th weekend when it was already in decline in major markets, so didn’t have a real “opening” weekend against which it could be compared. Cats I took out manually because it was such an outlier (for which my apologies to all modeling purists). The Greatest Showman did have a real opening weekend, but was a sleeper hit (arguably the biggest sleeper hit of recent years, in fact), and actually did fairly poorly on opening weekend.

That meant expanding the net to other films from Jon Chu and Lin-Manuel Miranda, and looking for a broader selection of musicals. The bottom line is that a musical can hit $30 million to $60 million if anchored to a big enough brand. With the model estimating that 42% of the normal audience is currently going to theaters, that would translate into an opening somewhere between $12 million and $24 million right now.

If the model is underestimating the current audience (which seems possible given the performance of a few movies recently), and In the Heights gets a “Lin-Manuel Miranda” bump, and its simultaneous release on HBO Max doesn’t deter moviegoers, then a weekend well over $20 million is doable. The model suggests some caution is in order, but this looks like it might be another weekend where the model misses the mood of the market. Last weekend, The Conjuring was predicted to make $12.6 million and ended up with $25 million. We might well see a repeat of those numbers for In the Heights this weekend.





The model also struggled a little with the prediction for Peter Rabbit 2. Sequels to family movies like this are fairly uncommon, but the performance of the first Peter Rabbit movie is probably a useful guide. Given its $25 million opening and a family market that is now estimated at 49% of its normal size, $10.8 million seems like a solid estimate to me. I’ll be hoping the film does a little better than that (perhaps $12 million), which would be a strong signal of a growing market. Peter Rabbit will have some competition though, which might slice off a million or two.





Assuming Petter Rabbit 2 tops $10 million and The Conjuring 3 doesn’t fall too much from its opening weekend, we should see four films beat $10 million at the box office this weekend, which would be a pandemic-era record. The combined total for the top six is predicted to fall a little, but note that In the Heights is expected to easily beat the prediction. If it hits $23 million, then we’ll see an up weekend at the box office again.

A total market bigger than last weekend is, for me, the benchmark this time around. Given how hard it is to predict In the Heights, I wouldn’t read too much into a weekend for the musical below $20 million or above $30 million, although I think that it will likely fall somewhere in that range. As long as it tops $12.3 million, our model will be happy that the market is continuing to grow.

Filed under: Weekend Preview, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, Jon M. Chu, Lin-Manuel Miranda