Weekend Box Office Predictions: 2016 Comes to a Close
We’ve made it to the final weekend of 2016, which means the last box office prediction blog of the year. Well, I personally am looking forward to a new year, where we don’t have to live in a year of numerous political discussions, political threats, celebrity deaths, and disasters. Well, actually, there’s no guarantee that turning a page on the calendar cancels any of that out, so oh well. This last week has just sucked for the entertainment community and I’m looking at something else to talk about besides depressing topics, so let’s talk about who’s going to the movies and what they’re seeing.
There are no new releases this weekend, so that makes this blog a fairly short one. Lots of time will have to be spent on putting the list together for the top five and a look back at last week’s predictions, so if this blog does turn out to be very short, there isn’t too much going on in new releases and we’ll just have our holdovers from the last couple of weeks.
So number one looks like it will once again go to Star Wars: Rogue One. While the results so far haven’t equaled the success of Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015), I was not expecting the film to cross the $325 million mark this quickly, so Disney and Lucasfilm must be over the moon, or perhaps over the Death Star, with the results so far. Unfortunately one factor that might help the box office is the unexpected passing of franchise star Carrie Fisher. This might boost franchise interest again just before the major buzz and box office results die down. Also keep in mind that this weekend is another holiday weekend with New Year’s Eve on Saturday and New Year’s Day on Sunday, so we’ll have more activity at the theaters this weekend. I’m going with a 30% drop and a third weekend total of $44.8 million.
Second place looks like it will belong to Sing. It did very well last week, especially over the holiday weekend. With it being the must-see movie for family audiences and children, a drop of less than 20% is possible, but for now I’ll go with 25% down and a second weekend total of $26.4 million. Third place is where it gets tricky, as does the rest of the top five. We have Passengers, Why Him?, Fences, and Assassin’s Creed all in the hunt. Even though Fences was outside the top five last weekend, it wasn’t in wide release until Sunday, which meant it only had one day to get its big weekend money. So for that third spot, I’ll give the edge to Passengers due to its big stars, though the word of mouth hasn’t been terrific. I’ll go with a 35% drop and a second weekend total of $9.7 million.
In fourth place I’ll go with Why Him?, which did pretty well for its crowded field. It even beat Assassin’s Creed, which was in more theaters. It should only drop 25%, which would mean $8.2 million for the weekend. And finally I’ll go with Fences in the fifth spot. Since it did have only one day in wide release last weekend, I see it actually going up in its second weekend, probably only about 10% and reaching $7.3 million for its second weekend. Well, actually, I lied. We do have one new release, Paterson, but it is in limited release, so it’s looking at a good per theater average and a non-player for the top five. The number of theaters it will be playing in has not been disclosed yet, but I’d assume only four or five.
Now for the scorecard from last week’s box office predictions. Remember, these were just for the three day weekend Friday-Sunday, not including the Wednesday, Thursday, or Monday numbers like some sites do. Rogue One was indeed number one, falling 58% and hitting $64 million. That was just a bit off my $62 million prediction. Sing took second place with $35.2 million for the three day, a bit off my $45 million prediction. Third place went to Passengers, which only hit $15 million for the three day weekend. It did okay if you count the Monday numbers, but still, way off again from my $25 million prediction. Fourth and fifth place I had swapped. In fourth I had Assassin’s Creed hitting $17 million when it only managed $10.2 million. The actual fourth place winner was Why Him? which got $11 million. My fifth place prediction for Why Him? was $12.5 million, so that was the closest prediction, but it was in the wrong place. I also had a prediction for Fences, $5.5 million, and it ended up in sixth place with, get this, $6.6 million, and again only one day in wide-release. That’s pretty good. Just a quick look at the limited releases from last week: Hidden Figures fared the best with a $515 thousand weekend in 25 theaters, but we also had strong showings from Patriots Day and Silence with $161 thousand and $130 thousand respectively. Two which didn’t do as hot were Live by Night with $33 thousand in four theaters and A Monster Calls with $30 thousand, which equated to less than $10,000 per theater. In limited release with big awards season contention or buzz, you want at least that. A24 did not report any numbers for 20th Century Women, so no word on if that did well or not either.
Well, I guess that does it for 2016. We’ve had tons of box office highs and lows, and that also reflects the mood of the nation. Still, this is the highest grossing domestic box office year in history. We don’t have the final numbers yet, obviously, but analysts are looking at $11 billion and counting. So sure, we had tons of high-profile blockbusters this summer that disappointed, a few huge surprise hits spread throughout the year, a huge year for animated fare, and Disney dominating in all four quarters, but we also had a great year for horror movies, superhero movies, and again animated movies. I’m preparing a blog post looking at the biggest surprises, failures, and overall highest grossing films domestically which will probably be done by early next week, so you can keep an eye out for that. Otherwise, it’s been a great joy to start up this weekly blog going back to August and I’ll continue into the new year.
We’ll see you in 2017!
