Weekend predictions: $40 million on the cards for Creed III

March 3, 2023

Creed III

Creed III looks likely to have the best opening weekend for a film in the Creed franchise, which (not adjusted for inflation) would also give it the best opening for a Rocky movie too, at least based on its excellent $5.45 million in previews, and our model’s expectations. Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre looks like an also-ran, unfortunately. Meanwhile, Ant-Man and Cocaine Bear keep things interesting as our model picks apart this weekend’s box office prospects.

Here’s what our model thought of Creed III going into the weekend:

Predicting the opening for a franchise film is actually pretty straightforward: look at previous installments in the franchise. For Creed III, this is complicated by the fact that the previous two movies opened on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. That means the Friday–Sunday weekend earnings aren’t an apples-to-apples comparison, but they generally prove to be a decent benchmark.

This installment in the Creed story was already looking healthy coming into the weekend, with its release in 4,007 theaters easily the best for the franchise, and high audience interest. Our market strength adjustment, while still pulling the prediction down, isn’t nearly as bad as it was a month ago, thanks to some recent strong debuts. That all added up to a strong predicted opening weekend before we had preview numbers.

And the preview numbers tell an even better story:

In contrast to the fundamentals prediction, it’s quite hard to find good previews comps for Creed III. The ones the model came up with predict an opening weekend multiplier around 7.5, but something closer to 10 is a possibility. For my money, that puts $50 million in play this weekend, at the outside limit, but something around $40 million seems more likely. My gut says it’ll beat $40 million, the model says it’ll fall a fraction short. Either way, it’s a great start.

Meanwhile, Operation Fortune is looking much less healthy. Even before the weekend, the model wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about its chances.

Guy Ritchie has a solid record at the box office, but outside of franchises his films usually open somewhere between $10 million and $15 million. Worryingly, The Gentlemen, which bears more than a passing resemblance to Operation Fortune, opened with only $10.7 million pre-pandemic. That translates into about $8.2 million, given the current market, and soft audience interest further pulled down our pre-weekend prediction.

The preview numbers haven’t helped. At all…

Our model uses preview numbers between 50% and 200% of the number for the target film when looking for comps, which means that The Gentlemen doesn’t make the list. For the record, however, it made $725,000 from previews on the way to that $10.7-million opening for a previews-to-weekend multiplier of 14.76. That’s exactly what the model expects this weekend based on the comps that did make the cut.

That means all is not entirely lost for Operation Fortune. The model’s final prediction of $4 million implies a high multiplier around 18.2 times preview earnings. That would at least be enough to land it in the top 5. Anything higher than that in the chart looks off the table at this point.

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

Creed III will win the weekend fairly easily. The race for second place is interesting though. The model makes Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania the favorite, but Cocaine Bear has actually overtaken it on the daily chart during the week. Family audiences should keep Ant-Man in second place over the weekend, but it could be a close race.

Also worth looking out for this weekend: Puss in Boots: The Last Wish might finally overtake Avatar: The Way of Water this weekend, after eleven weeks of trying. Given that Avatar beat it $63.4 million to $12.4 million on its opening, the fact that Puss in Boots is even still in the top 10, let alone still picking up $3 million plus dollars, is a testament to its remarkable staying power. It still needs another $16.95 million to make it into our list of the 100 leggiest films of all time. It could yet make it.

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Filed under: Weekend Preview, Avatar: The Way of Water, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, Cocaine Bear, Creed III, Operation Fortune: Ruse de guerre, Rocky, Creed, Guy Ritchie