Weekend predictions: Voyagers won’t trouble Godzilla vs. Kong
April 9, 2021
There will be no prizes for predicting the winner at the box office this weekend, but the race for second place looks as though it’ll be close, with three returning films—Nobody, Raya and the Last Dragon, The Unholy—and debutant Voyagers all looking like they have a shot. Here’s what our model thinks going into the weekend…
Voyagers looks like it’ll struggle to make a huge impression this weekend. Even in the best of times, non-franchise science fiction films are a bit of a niche market and openings over $10 million are relatively rare. Our model would predict an opening around $6.4 million for this film if we weren’t still coming out of the worst of the pandemic. Given it’ll be playing in less than 2,000 theaters and our model estimates 37% of the normal audience is currently going to theaters, somewhere between $1.5 million and $2 million looks like the best bet. However, given the recent performance of new releases, there is some upside potential, with anything up to $3 million being within reach.
Even though it probably won’t make a lot of headlines on Sunday morning, a $2.5 million weekend for Voyagers would be another sign that the market is recovering.
Whatever happens, Godzilla vs. Kong will come out an easy winner this weekend. Our model expects it to decline to around $16.3 million, assuming a relatively flat theater count (Warner Bros. is not reporting theater counts, so we have to estimate that number). It could do a shade better than that though, since the model doesn’t take into account five-day openings, which usually have slightly smaller drop-offs because many die-hard fans will have seen the film on Wednesday or Thursday the previous week.
Business as a whole looks as though it will be down around 40% from last weekend. If GvK does have a small drop and Voyagers out-performs, a total of $30 million from the top six seems like a possibility. Anything at that level or higher would be another victory.
Filed under: Weekend Preview, Godzilla vs. Kong, Nobody, Voyagers, Raya and the Last Dragon, The Unholy