Weekend projections: Nope on its way to solid $44-million opening

July 24, 2022

Nope

Nope is headed for an impressive $44-million debut, according to Universal’s Sunday-morning projection, just a little behind our predicted $48.7 million, but a strong number nevertheless. It gives Jordan Peele his third straight number one opening, and Universal pointed out this morning that it’s the biggest opening for a completely original film since Peele’s Us, which made $71.1 million on its first weekend back in 2019.

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



As I detailed in Friday’s prediction column, our model thinks a pre-pandemic “par score” for Nope would be around $41.9 million, given Jordan Peele’s box office history and Universal’s record with horror movies. Given our current adjustment for market conditions, that would translate into a $32-million opening weekend. Nope is coming in well ahead of that figure, which is great news for Universal (which incidentally has four films in the top ten this weekend), and also for the theatrical business more broadly. Our pandemic adjustment will increase to another all-time high as a result, with our model now estimating that 80% of the pre-pandemic audience has now returned to theaters.

That recovery is looking quite broad-based now, with strong performances this weekend from Where the Crawdads Sing and Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris, which will be down 40% and 31% respectively in their second weekends. Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank will likewise hold up well this weekend, declining 39% to a projected $3.875 million in its second weekend. This weekend has possibly the best mix of films in the top ten since the pandemic, and we’ve now had nine straight weekends with all films combined have earned over $100 million. The last run that lasted this long started with the release of Joker in October, 2019.

- Studio weekend projections
- All-time biggest weekends - All-time top-grossing movies in North America
- All-time top-grossing movies worldwide

Bruce Nash,

Filed under: Jordan Peele