Weekend predictions: Cocaine Bear and Jesus Revolution battle for second place

February 24, 2023

Cocaine Bear

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania goes into the weekend a hot favorite to retain its spot at the top of box office chart. Even a steep fall from its $106.1-million opening should leave it well ahead of the two new wide releases. Which debutant finishes second is a more interesting question, and one that we don’t know with absolute certainty going into the weekend. Horror comedy Cocaine Bear should come in ahead of the faith-based drama Jesus Revolution, but it could be a close race.

Here’s what our model thought of Cocaine Bear going into the weekend:

The risk with a movie like this is that buzz around its trailer won’t translate into people actually going to a movie theater to watch the whole thing—the Snakes on a Plane effect, as it’s known. The good news is that Cocaine Bear seems to be coming in quite strong based on its Thursday previews…

As a rule of thumb, horror movies and black comedies earn about 10 times their previews over opening weekend. Our model takes a weighted average of the fundamentals and preview predictions to end up with a predicted weekend just short of $20 million. It looks virtually certain to have the third-best opening of 2023 behind Quantumania and M3GAN.

That kind of debut would be a terrific performance for Jesus Revolution, based on the historical first-weekend earnings of faith-based dramas:

With that background, a reported $3 million in “previews” sounds like an excellent result. And it is. But it includes $2.36 million from early access screenings on Wednesday, meaning that it earned $940,000 from “traditional” previews. When that’s put through out model, it still points towards a very good opening…

In fact, if Cocaine Bear declines rapidly from its preview evening earnings, Jesus Revolution could pip it to the second-place post. The model’s final prediction for Jesus Revolution puts it about 30% behind Cocaine Bear this weekend. If Cocaine Bear really does slump and Jesus Revolution has an excellent hold through the weekend, we could have a surprise second place for the faith-based drama (helped considerably by the $2.36 million from early screenings). My money’s on the bear though.

Here’s what that model thinks the top 10 will look like.

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania should win the weekend easily, but the model might be a little over-optimistic about its second-weekend hold. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it miss $40 million.

With no film outside the top three likely to top $5 million, we’re looking at a fairly steep decline from last weekend, and probably less than $100 million in total for the top 10—although the market as a whole should top that figure.

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Filed under: Weekend Preview, M3GAN, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Cocaine Bear, Jesus Revolution