Weekend predictions: will Avatar get an Oscar boost? Can Infinity Pool or Left Behind break through?

January 27, 2023

Infinity Pool

The box office performance of Avatar: The Way of Water certainly won’t be harmed this weekend by its 4 Oscar nominations (including Best Picture). How much it will help is the pertinent question for our weekend predictions. It’s the only film from last weekend’s top 10 that looks likely to get a bump from the nominations. One film that wasn’t in the top 10 last weekend could be revived by its Oscar noms: The Fabelmans will add a thousand theaters and try to ride its seven nominations to the best weekend of its run so far. Other Oscar hopefuls expanding this weekend include The Banshees of Inisherin (back in 1,205 theaters), Women Talking (adding 553 locations to play in 707 theaters), Elvis (rereleased in 841 theaters), and Tár, which expands from 106 to 537 movie theaters. Going up against all that are three new releases: Infinity Pool, Left Behind: Rise of the Antichrist, and Fear. That’s a lot of competition in the lower reaches of the top 10, but Avatar is in little danger of losing its top spot.

Infinity Pool comes into the weekend with a lot of buzz, mainly revolving around how extreme its content is, even in the R-rated cut being released in domestic theaters. Whether that will help or hurt its box office prospects is hard to say. This is the widest opening weekend for its distributor, Neon, although Oscar-winner Parasite eventually expanded into 2,001 locations. That weekend for Parasite garnered $5.7 million at the box office, which will likely be out of reach for Infinity Pool. The model still likes its chances though:

I think Neon would be delighted with an opening over $3 million, but Men is probably a good point of reference. It opened with $3.3 million back in May last year. Our model estimated the market was at 69% of its pre-pandemic size at that time, virtually identical to the current 68% measure. Men had the advantage of playing in more theaters, and my hunch is that the lack of footprint for Infinity Pool will keep it under $3 million. It’s definitely a hard film to predict though.

Another film that’s hard to predict is Left Behind: Rise of the Antichrist, which opened yesterday with $610,574 from 1,393 theaters, enough for 4th place on the daily chart. It’s playing in 1,120 theaters today and Fathom reports that it’s currently in 6th place for the day.

Our prediction uses Thursday’s number as a baseline for predicting the weekend:

There aren’t many comparable films to look at, but what we have points towards the film making 3.68 times what it earned on Thursday. I feel like our prediction is on the high side, but it would leave the film in 8th place for the weekend when stacked up against our predictions for the films in the top 10. So maybe it can pull off a good result.

It’s a unusual race to be sure, but the battle between Infinity Pool and Left Behind to be the biggest opener this weekend is an interesting one.

Here’s what that model thinks the top 11 will look like.

After quite a bit of number crunching (apologies for the late release of the predictions this week, by the way), the model thinks one film will get enough of a bounce from its Oscar nominations to move up into the top 10 this weekend. The Fabelmans looks likely top top $1 million quite comfortably, and is predicted to finish 9th, just ahead of The Whale, which will stay in 10th spot.

The model thinks Women Talking will just miss out on the top 10, but it could sneak in. It’s had the biggest boost from the Oscar nominations of any film, relatively speaking, but is expanding from 153 to 707 theaters, which is a big jump that will probably soften its theater average.

Overall, the top four films this weekend look easy to predict, with really the only question being how much will they decline. The next seven could line up in virtually any order, but the Oscar nominees (outside of Avatar and Puss in Boots) will mostly hover towards the bottom of the top 10.

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Filed under: Weekend Preview, Avatar: The Way of Water, Elvis, Men, The Whale, The Banshees of Inisherin, Fear, The Fabelmans, TÁR, Women Talking, Left Behind: Rise of the Antichrist, Infinity Pool