Weekend projections: Dungeons & Dragons starts with impressive $38.5 million

April 2, 2023

Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves will post the best opening for a film that isn’t a sequel since Nope debuted with $44.4 million in July last year. Paramount expects the film to come in with $38.5 million for the weekend, quite a bit higher than expectations going into the weekend, and well ahead of the second weekend of John Wick: Chapter 4.

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

Honor Among Thieves was expected to launch with about $30 million, so this is a good result for Paramount. A 91% critics score and 93% audience score at Rotten Tomatoes suggests it could have good legs too, which would set it up for a sequel or two. Its international opening is expected to be around $33 million, which is arguably a little less encouraging.

While finishing in second place is a marginal disappointment for John Wick: Chapter 4, its 62% decline is quite respectable for the fourth installment in a franchise, and it will end the weekend with about $122.8 million domestically and $245 million worldwide to date.

In third place, His Only Son is doing great business for new distributor Angel Studios, which expects $5.3 million for the weekend. We weren’t able to issue a prediction for this film, since it is coming from a new distributor and we didn’t have an official theater count, but it’s safe to say that this more than exceeds expectations. The film is well positioned to continue its good run as we head into Passover and Easter.

The films most harmed by the strong debut for Dungeons & Dragons are Shazam! Fury of the Gods and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, both of which will be down by almost half compared to last weekend. Quantumania has the consolation of already earning well over $200 million domestically (and another $250 million plus abroad). Shazam! will just make it past $50 million domestically this weekend (it’ll end the weekend with $53.6 million or so), and has $66 million internationally so far.

The message in this weekend’s results seems to be that audiences are looking for something new, and the great results for Dungeons & Dragons and His Only Son, plus a very respectable $1.8-million debut for drama A Thousand and One tell us that there’s demand for all sorts of films.

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

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