Weekend projections: Beyoncé powers to $21-million opening

December 3, 2023

Although it has arguably lost some strength over the course of the weekend, there’s no question RENAISSANCE: A FILM BY BEYONCÉ is enjoying an excellent debut weekend, with AMC Theatres Distribution predicting it will earn $21 million over three days. That’s a powerhouse performance for the weekend after Thanksgiving. Godzilla Minus One looks like it will top $11 million, and Bollywood action movie Animal will earn a little over $6 million, meaning nearly $40 million will be earned this weekend by movies from non-traditional sources.

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

As I mentioned on Friday, this was a very difficult weekend to predict, with four of the five new wide releases being unusual in one way or another. That made them hard to predict, and also made it difficult to model how much they would compete against the films already in theaters—does RENAISSANCE compete against The Hunger Games for example? The signs are that it does, with that film, and all the other returning titles, performing quite a bit worse than our model predicted.

That means we have ended up with a weekend that looks a little weak on paper, certainly compared to what our model thought was possible on Friday morning. But there are some notable stats that are worth noting this morning. RENAISSANCE will have the best opening weekend on the weekend after Thanksgiving since The Last Samurai earned $24.3 million on its opening weekend back in 2003; Animal’s total on Friday was the best single day ever for a Indian movie in North America; and this weekend will beat the comparable weekend last year by a long way, with Sony projecting a $97.9-million weekend for all movies combined this year, compared with $54.9 million this time last year.

The bottom line is that a diverse slate of films are performing well this weekend, and making up for some notable underperformances from major studio films in recent weeks. If that’s broadening the audience of moviegoers beyond its regular demographics, that’s surely good news going into the end of the year.

- 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