Weekend predictions: $13.2 million in previews puts $100-million weekend in play for Black Widow

July 9, 2021

Black Widow

As of Friday morning, all signs point towards a spectacular opening weekend for Black Widow. The most eagerly-anticipated film of the Summer posted $13.2 million in previews between 5pm and midnight on Thursday, per Disney, which easily tops the $7.1 million preview earnings posted by F9 a couple of weeks ago. F9 went on to earn $70 million over its opening weekend, which was just shy of 10 times the earnings from its preview shows. If Black Widow does the same it’ll surge past the $100 million market. Whatever happens, it’s set for the biggest weekend of the pandemic era, and our models say $100 million is well within reach.

Before getting into the final prediction for the weekend, here’s what our model said before we had news of the preview figures.





The comparisons for Black Widow are the movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe released by Disney that featured a character in their first standalone movie. As you see from the figures, these films have varied widely in popularity on opening weekend, and peaked with the releases of Black Panther and Captain Marvel in 2018 and 2019.

Black Widow is a bit of a leap into the unknown, given that it’s kicking off Phase 4 of the MCU and comes after a two-year break since the release of Spider-Man: Far From Home. Guardians of the Galaxy seems like a good comparison, and it finished in the middle of the pack above with an opening of $94 million. After our usual adjustments—in particular the model’s assumption that 65% of the usual audience is going to action movies—Black Widow was predicted to earn $63 million or so this weekend. That would actually be slightly less than F9’s debut.

Then the preview numbers came in…





Using the same movies for comparison, a $13.2-million first evening suggests that a $100-million weekend isn’t just achievable, but highly likely. The lowest preview-to-weekend multiplier among the comparison films was Captain Marvel’s 7.41. If Black Widow did the same, it would end up with a $97-million weekend. If it performs like Guardians of the Galaxy (which is again the movie in the middle of the pack), it’ll land on $111 million for the full weekend (including previews).

Two weeks ago, I ran a similar analysis for F9. That predicted a $54.6-million opening based solely on the comparison films and a $70-million based only on the preview figures. In that case, the prediction based on the preview figures was within 1% of the final weekend tally. It’s tempting to assume that Black Widow’s preview numbers are all we need to know and that we should be disappointed with anything less than a $110 million weekend at this point.

I think that’s jumping the gun though. A more cautious approach is to average the two predictions we have for Black Widow: the $63-million “fundamentals” prediction, and the $111-million “previews” prediction. That basically assumes that the hardcore fans that rushed to the previews last night are less representative of the general audience than would be the case in pre-pandemic days, and that the opening weekend will be skewed more towards Thursday night. It would still imply an opening weekend of $87.3 million, which would set a new pandemic record.

That $87.3 million figure is what I’m going with as our final prediction, but I will be joining everyone who cares about the future of the theatrical business in willing the film to top $100 million this weekend. It’s certainly within reach.





One thing that’s absolutely certain at this point is that we’ll see a weekend where all films reporting box office will have earned over $100 million between them. That’s technically the first time we’ll see that milestone during the box office recovery, although total box office was over $100 million the weekend of June 25, and the milestone was missed because not all films reported box office.

In any case, it’s a racing certainty that we’ll see the best weekend for an individual film and the best weekend for the market as a whole since theaters started reopening.

Filed under: Weekend Preview, F9: The Fast Saga, Black Widow, Marvel Cinematic Universe