Weekend projections: Mario cruises to fourth win, Are You There God? comes in third
April 30, 2023
Here’s how the domestic numbers look as of Sunday morning (click on the image for the full chart of films reporting so far)…
Mario overtakes Finding Dory today to become the second-highest grossing animated film of all time in North America. It’s the tenth animated film, and the third from Illumination Entertainment to pass $1 billion globally. It takes the animation house past $9 billion in global box office earnings over its lifetime.
The new releases are largely coming in behind what our model expected on Friday. Return of the Jedi is arguably the best performer, with its re-release picking up a projected $4.694 million this weekend, about 40% ahead of our model’s prediction.
Other than that, our model’s predictions, based largely on preview numbers on Thursday, are proving to be very much on the high side. The studios often stress that preview earnings are a poor indicator of how well a film will do over the weekend. That’s not entirely true—they are predictive, with some caveats—and the ratio between Thursday’s earnings and the remainder of the weekend does tell us something about how front-loaded a film is on opening weekend, and potentially how strong its legs will be.
In the case of Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, the Thursday preview earnings most likely reflected the fans of the book who were very excited to see the film come out. The people seeing it on Friday, Saturday and Sunday skew towards a more casual audience and people who were recommended the movie by friends. It’s too early to say how good word of mouth will be on this film, but it isn’t looking great so far.
Likewise Sisu and Big George Foreman, both of which looked as though they would make the top five as of Friday. Sisu will end up in tenth place and Big George Foreman eleventh, as each ran out of steam through the weekend. For Sisu, word of mouth could still kick in—it has a 93% critics score and 90% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, for example, and could example from its 1,006-theater opening. Big George Foreman has a 95% audience score on the site, but just 43% from critics, meaning its future depends on person-to-person recommendations. Given its soft start, it’ll have a hard time holding onto enough theaters for that to matter, and it looks unlikely to top $10 million.
- Studio weekend projections
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Bruce Nash, bruce.nash@the-numbers.com
The Super Mario Bros. Movie will easily win the weekend, according to studio estimates released on Sunday morning. The video game hero and his pals will pick up another $40 million in North America, taking it past $490 million here. With another projected $68.3 million internationally, it’ll have over $530 million outside North America by the end of the weekend, and pass $1 billion worldwide on Sunday. The new releases are mostly coming in behind expectations, with Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret the best-performing among them, earning $6.8 million on its debut.
- All-time top-grossing movies in North America
- All-time top-grossing movies worldwide