Weekend predictions: Lost City has the edge going into the weekend

March 25, 2022

The Lost City

The Lost City posted a very respectable $2.5 million in previews on Thursday ahead of its official release today, which puts it on course to win the weekend, although its race with The Batman could be close. Infinite Storm isn’t likely to be in the running for a place in the top three, but will provide a bit of extra oomph to the weekend and could help the market as a whole increase from last weekend. And RRR provides us with a wildcard element to keep things interesting for everyone.

The Lost City has the kind of pedigree that portends a good opening weekend. Aside from a misstep back in 2015, Sandra Bullock has one of the best records in the business outside of franchise tentpoles. Even with the model being quite cautious in its estimate of the share of audience currently going to theaters, a weekend around $25 million would be par for the course before we saw the preview numbers this morning.

While those previews aren’t gigantic, they compare quite favorably with some recent films in the comedy-action/adventure genre, and there’s clearly a possibility that Lost City could come in comfortably over $30 million this weekend with a bit of a tailwind. Our model uses a weighted average of the fundamentals prediction and the preview prediction to come up with an expected $30.1 million for the weekend.

Meanwhile, Infinite Storm will be trying to lure people looking for something a little more seriously dramatic from their adventures (and also spillover from sold-out showings of The Lost City and The Batman)…

Our model thinks that $2.3 million would be a respectable weekend for Infinite Storm. Personally, I think that it could suffer the same fate as The Outfit and Umma last weekend, and fail to find its audience. A spot in the top ten with over $1 million from the weekend would be a good result, in my opinion.

Note that our weekend prediction doesn’t include a number for RRR, which is reportedly doing well. Our model doesn’t have information to give a firm prediction for the film, alas, but it seems like a good bet make the top ten, much like The Kashmir Files did last weekend with an estimated $1.485 million.

If RRR does well, and The Lost City and Infinite Storm come somewhat close to the model’s predictions, we should see a modest “up” weekend compared to last time. With the first half of April packed with high-profile new releases, that should start a nice trend as we move into Spring.

Filed under: Weekend Preview, The Batman, The Lost City, The Outfit, Infinite Storm, RRR, Umma, The Kashmir Files, Sandra Bullock