Weekend projections: Magic Mike tops slow Super Bowl weekend

February 12, 2023

Magic Mike’s Last Dance

Magic Mike’s Last Dance will dance to the top of the box office chart this weekend as what Warner Bros. described this morning as a “specially curated list” of 1,500 theaters will be enough to beat out a long list of returning films, and the re-release of Titanic. Overall box office is looking predictably soft over Super Bowl weekend.

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



Magic Mike’s Last Dance was originally conceived and imagined for HBO Max, according to Warner Bros., and its release “reflects a shift in strategy for our studio to refocus on the theatrical experience and elevate the property to a much greater degree for our subsequent availabilities, while at the same time providing films to cinemas that desperately need new releases.”

There’s no question there’s demand for the film in theaters, and it’ll have easily the highest theater average this weekend, with something around $5,500 per location. The studio is looking forward to strong days on Monday (“Galentine’s Day”) and Tuesday (Valentine’s Day), and says it will expand into additional locations next weekend.

My understanding from the rumor mill is that the recent release of House Party and the future release of Evil Dead Rise are part of this back-to-theaters strategy for the studio. House Party opened in exactly 1,400 theaters, which was presumably also a “curated” list. We don’t yet have an official estimate for Evil Dead Rise, but my working assumption is that it will play in around 1,500 theaters.

The rest of the chart has a long list of films earning in the $5.5-million to $7-million range, with Avatar: The Way of Water landing second with $6.88 million and closing in on $650 million in total—its end-of-weekend projection is $646.9 million.

That would put it on the cusp of overtaking Titanic on the all-time domestic chart, if it wasn’t for the fact that Titanic is earning another $6.4 million this weekend from its 25th-anniversary re-release. While a little below our model’s prediction, that’s a very respectable number.

Trivia fans may be asking when was the last time two films in the top three had the same director. I believe the answer to that question is July 16, 1982 when ET: The Extra-Terrestrial and Raiders of the Lost Ark, both directed by Steven Spielberg, took the top two spots. It’s a fairly complicated DB query for a Sunday morning though, so I’d welcome an email if anyone who can find a more recent example.

Back here in 2023, the overall picture for the weekend is definitely deflated thanks to the Super Bowl. However, the studios tend to be fairly conservative in their projections on Super Bowl Sunday. There does seem to be a correlation between how close the result of the big game is and how many people head to theaters in the evening. So we might see an uptick in the numbers when we get the final results on Monday.

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

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Bruce Nash,

Filed under: Steven Spielberg