Weekend predictions: Spider-Man and Scream do battle for top spot

January 21, 2022

Scream

After beating Spider-Man: No Way Home fairly handily last weekend, Scream will need a good hold to stay at the top of the chart this time around. Our model thinks Spidey will regain top spot, but it’s likely to be close between the two of them. This weekend’s new wide releases look like they will struggle to mount a challenge at the top of the chart.

First up, here’s what the model thinks of the chances for Redeeming Love…





Although it’s being released by Universal, the film looks more like a traditional release from its production company, Pure Flix, and I’ve used their previous films as a point of comparison. Predicting the audience participation rate for this one is particularly hard because it’s a romantic drama—a genre that has performed particularly poorly during the pandemic—but also a faith-based film, which is a genre that has performed quite well. Given the uncertainty, I have assumed it’ll perform in the middle range as far as audience attendance goes, and come in with a weekend around $1.5 million. There’s a possibility it could hit $3 million on the high end, but I think that’s a best-case scenario.





The King’s Daughter is another film that’s hard to predict, partly because it’s another film heavy on romance, but also because of the long and winding road it’s taken to get into theaters. It was originally filmed in 2014, and sat on a shelf at Paramount until Arclight Films acquired it in June, 2020. That kind of delay from production to release usually signifies some problems with the film, and a quiet release through Gravitas Ventures in January makes the model skeptical that it’ll generate very much at the box office. The comparable films are all wide releases from distributors not known for their wide releases, and those types of release rarely do well at the box office.

Under normal circumstances, a film like this might earn around $3 million, but the tough market for romantic films right now drags our model’s prediction down to $760,000.





With not much competition expected from new releases, Spider-Man and Scream will do battle for top spot. The model thinks Spider-Man will win, but its rosy prediction is based partly on the fact that the super hero adventure is holding on to theaters well. That’s normally a good sign of strong week-to-week box office, but right now I think that’s largely because there’s not much new arriving in theaters. I wouldn’t be surprised if No Way Home drops by more than 16%, and Scream definitely has a chance at topping the chart, in my opinion. A virtual tie between the two, with both earning between $12 million and $13 million this weekend, wouldn’t surprise me.

Filed under: Weekend Preview, The King’s Daughter, Scream, Redeeming Love, Spider-Man: No Way Home