Weekend predictions: a wide-open race for number one

September 2, 2022

Spider-Man: No Way Home

This weekend at the box office is a forecaster’s nightmare, with a two new wide releases that are only playing in 1,880 and 1,184 theaters, a classic re-release that’s opening in 1,246 locations, and a recent blockbuster getting a re-release in 3,935 theaters. Making things even harder to predict is that tickets will only be $3 each at thousands of theaters on National Cinema Day on Saturday (see the Regal, Cinemark, and Marcus Theatres sites, and check your local listings—and note that the UK has National Cinema Day on Saturday too). There are four films that have a realistic chance of winning the weekend: Spider-Man: No Way Home, Bullet Train, Top Gun: Maverick, and (even though it’s a rank outsider) DC League of Super Pets. Any one of them would be a highly unusual box office winner, given how long all of them have been in theaters, but that’s mainly the result of a highly unusual lack of major new releases.

Predicting the weekend for Spider-Man: No Way Home is particularly difficult because it’s a very recent release that earned an absolute fortune at the box office. While it’s obviously an exceptionally popular film, it’s fair to say it’s already reached its target audience (several times over in some cases). How many people will come back to watch it again, even with some new material added, is hard to say.

Fortunately, it’s not completely unheard of for a film to return to theaters less than a year after its original release. This is the tenth time a film has returned in over 500 theaters within 400 days of its original release since 2000. The results of these re-releases have been decidedly mixed, but there a couple of good comparisons: Once Upon a Deadpool grossed $2.7 million when it returned to theaters in December, 2018; and Avatar grossed $4 million when it reappeared (mostly on IMAX screens) in August, 2010.

I did a couple of linear regressions using slightly different methodologies on the data above, and came up with an expected weekend for No Way Home somewhere between $3 million and $7 million, with an average of almost exactly $5 million. I’m far from confident in that number, but there is precedent for a returning film making that kind of money, and the fact that Spider-Man is playing in nearly 4,000 theaters will obviously help it considerably. How many of its tickets sold will only be for $3 though? Honestly, I don’t know.

With the two genuinely-new wide releases not expected to hit the top 10, here’s our model’s overall prediction for the weekend…

The weekend-to-weekend declines for each film don’t reflect the effects of National Cinema Day, which is impossible to predict, and also don’t take into account the long Labor Day weekend (the predictions are for the three days from Friday to Sunday, by the way). Labor Day weekend is the slowest holiday weekend at the box office, so it alone usually doesn’t usually affect films all that much. National Cinema Day is a big unknown though.

Given the fact that only about 10% separates Bullet Train, Top Gun: Maverick and DC League of Super Pets, the three are more-or-less tied so far as the model is concerned. My hunch is that Top Gun (which is getting more PLF screens this weekend) will outperform the model’s prediction, and could well top Bullet Train. Given the wide uncertainty with regard to Spider-Man, that gives Top Gun a path to a chart-topping finish.

Whichever film ends up on top, I think the weekend race will be a tight one. The final result will largely depend on how successful National Cinema Day is at bringing families into theaters. If it’s a hit, Bullet Train will probably suffer compared to the other three films at the top of the chart. Even then, which movie will win the weekend is a guessing game at this point.

Filed under: Weekend Preview, Top Gun: Maverick, DC League of Super Pets, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Bullet Train