Weekend estimates: The Lost City tops with $31 million, RRR makes the top 3

March 27, 2022

The Lost City

The Lost City looks as though it’ll post a weekend right in line with expectations, with Paramount projecting it’ll earn $31 million at the domestic box office this weekend. That’ll be enough for a comfortable weekend win, ahead of The Batman’s $20.5 million or so. Bollywood blockbuster RRR: Rise, Roar, Revolt will land in third with an impressive $9.5-million projected weekend.

Here’s how the domestic numbers look this morning (click on the image for the full chart of films reporting so far)…



The Lost City is posting very respectable numbers for a film not based on pre-existing material. In fact, it’s the first wholly-original film to break the $30-million barrier on opening weekend since Onward back in March, 2020. It’s another confirmation of the popular appeal of Sandra Bullock, who’s making a return to theaters after headlining The Unforgivable and Bird Box on Netflix. Arguably, it’s her first star turn in a theatrical feature since Gravity back in 2013, which seems like too long for someone who can fairly reliably deliver $100-million movies all on her own. She’ll be in Bullet Train in a supporting role this Summer, but has no other announced film projects (to my knowledge). As this weekend shows again, the theatrical industry benefits considerably from her talents.

The standout performance of the weekend is arguably RRR, which will post the second-highest opening weekend for a Bollywood movie with a projected $9.5-million weekend. Baahubali 2: The Conclusion holds the record with $10.4 million back in April, 2017. S.S. Rajamouli directed both films.

Also performing fantastically this weekend is Everything Everywhere All At Once, which is projected to earn just over $500,000 from only 10 theaters. Its theater average will be comfortably the best of 2022 so far, and stands up to Licorice Pizza’s performance last year, when it opened with an average of $86,289 from four theaters.

This weekend also sees Spider-Man: No Way Home hit $800 million at the domestic box office. We won’t know until tomorrow whether it hit the mark on Saturday (coincidentally its 100th day in release) or Sunday. Sony’s current estimates have it on $800.008 million as of the end of the day on Saturday. It’s only the third film ever to make $800 million domestically.

The modest disappointment this weekend is Infinite Storm, which will just creep into the top 10 with about $750,000 this weekend. That performance isn’t unexpected, given the competition the film faced, but it does highlight the spotty nature of the market still. With most films missing their predictions this weekend (in large part due to competition with The Lost City, I suspect), we’ll see the market as a whole flat or slightly down this week, although the big releases coming up should see us back to solid growth over the next few weeks.

- Weekend studio estimates
- All-time top-grossing movies in North America
- All-time top-grossing movies worldwide

Bruce Nash,

Filed under: Weekend Estimates, The Batman, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Spider-Man: No Way Home, The Lost City, Infinite Storm, RRR, Sandra Bullock, S.S. Rajamouli