Weekend projections: Black Panther clocks fifth win on second-slowest weekend of 2022

December 11, 2022

Optimists can claim that the glass is two fifty-seconds full this weekend as returning films are scraping together just enough at the box office to avoid it being labeled the worst weekend of 2022. Films reporting so far are expected to earn $35.8 million, which is just fractionally better than the $34.8 million earned over the weekend of January 28. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever will top the chart for the fifth time, which be the most times a film does it this year (although Spider-Man: No Way Home won six times in total, including two weekends in 2021).

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

Black Panther’s run at the top is coming to an end, of course, and it continues to track slightly behind our model’s expectations. This weekend’s $11.1 million isn’t bad though, and takes the film close to $410 million in total domestically. With another $358 million outside North America, it will have accumulated $768 million worldwide by the end of the weekend, per Disney. That takes it past The Batman and Thor: Love and Thunder to become the fifth-highest grossing film worldwide in 2022. Unless Avatar: The Way of Water does far less business than expected, Wakanda Forever will finish the year in sixth place.

Other returning films generally did fairly well this weekend. Violent Night is the standout performer, beating our prediction by almost 50% to earn $8.7 million this weekend in its second outing. It’ll finish the weekend with $26.7 million, and looks like it’ll be useful counter-programming through the holidays.

Spoiler Alert is doing a shade better than expected, but will still only finish the weekend in ninth place with $700,000 on its wide expansion.

In limited release, The Whale is headed for $360,000 from just six theaters. Its average, at $60,000 per theater, is the best for any film released in 2022. Everything Everywhere All At Once previously held that title, with $501,305 from 10 theaters on its opening weekend giving it the previous best figure. Given the difference in theater count, those two performances are basically identical: each film sold out most shows over their opening weekend. Whether The Whale can build an audience is another question. One could hardly call it a crowd-pleaser. It could well be up for some awards come the New Year, though, so it should at least have a good run coming up.

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

Bruce Nash, bruce.nash@the-numbers.com