Weekend predictions: Bob Marley could have the best weekend of 2024 so far

February 16, 2024

Bob Marley: One Love

Bob Marley: One Love made a huge splash on Wednesday when it had the best mid-week opening day ever for a Valentine’s Day release. Its $14 million debut is also the best single day for a movie at the box office so far this year, comfortably beating Mean Girls’ $11.5-million opening day. This weekend, it could claim the biggest weekend of the year if it can top $28.6 million between Friday and Sunday. That landmark isn’t guaranteed, but the biopic should end the weekend with over $40 million in the bank, and possibly more than $50 million, from its first five days in theaters.

To predict the opening three-day weekend for One Love, the model uses its performance on Wednesday and Thursday. Clearly Wednesday was something of an outlier thanks to Valentine’s Day, and its earnings came down to Earth with a bump on Thursday. The model essentially averages out the film’s performance over its first two days in coming up with its prediction.

If we go solely by Thursday’s number, Bob Marley will come in with something around $20 million this weekend. If Thursday’s number proves to be a bit of an aberration, for example because people were more likely to stay home on Thursday after going out on Wednesday, then $25 million or $30 million comes into play as a target.

I think the model is a little over-optimistic with its prediction, but hitting $25 million this weekend, and passing $40 million over five days seems like a good bet.

Madame Web has had more of a struggle since its debut on Wednesday, with just $8.2 million earned so far. It declined 64% from Wednesday to Thursday, compared to Bob Marley’s 72% drop, so it might have better legs through the weekend.

The model thinks it will, with a Wednesday+Thursday-to-weekend multiplier of 2.13, compared to 1.87 for One Love. That would take it to $17.5 million this weekend, which doesn’t seem like a crazy goal. Something between $10 million and $15 million wouldn’t be surprising though. Whatever happens, it will have by far the worst opening for a film in Sony’s Marvel Universe, a record (perhaps surprisingly) held by Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, which opened with $35.4 million back in 2018.

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

This weekend’s other new wide release also opened mid-week. The Chosen: Season 4, Episodes 4–6 did quite a bit worse than the first release from two weeks ago. It could have been harmed a bit by the post-Valentine’s Day slump on Thursday, but even if it’s falling a little short comparatively, it’s still earning good money.

Overall, we’re looking at a weekend that will run substantially ahead of last time, but that’s a low bar to cross, to say the least—last weekend may well prove to be the worst weekend in theaters this year. More substantively, it looks as though we have the first bona fide hit of 2024, courtesy of the Reggae legend.

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Bruce Nash,

Filed under: Weekend Preview, Mean Girls, Bob Marley: One Love, Madame Web, The Chosen: Season 4 Episodes 4-6, Sony’s Marvel Universe