Weekend Box Office Predictions: Fantastic Numbers and How to Get Them
As we reach the halfway point of the month, we see another crowded weekend at the box office. This weekend sees the debuts of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, The Edge of Seventeen, and Bleed for This in wide release and we’re looking for some decent holdovers from previous weeks as well. We’ll also see the expansion of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk into wide release, so we’ll have plenty to talk about this week.
The battle for first place will be a no-brainer, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, which is also opening in the most theaters of the new releases. With a cast like Eddie Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Jon Voight, Ezra Miller, Colin Farrell, Ron Perlman, and Samantha Morton, that draws in a few non Potter-heads, and it’s in a prime spot for big releases. In fact, it was 15 years ago that the original, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001), or Philosopher’s Stone, which I’ve always preferred as a title, premiered. Since then this weekend has been host to other Harry Potter films, Twilight (2008-2012) films, and The Hunger Games (2012-2015) sequels, and few of them had bad debuts respectively speaking. So for how well it will do, I’ll take a recent example: Doctor Strange is in a few ways modeled after the first Iron Man (2008), and Strange earned 86% of what Iron Man did. So using the same equation, Fantastic Beasts will earn about $77.5 million, which is almost exactly what has been for-casted by tracking, $78 million. It also has some help from critics, and it sits at 78% on Rotten Tomatoes. Opening in 4,144 theaters would mean it averages $18,702 per theater.
For second place I would normally put Doctor Strange, but since the subject matter crosses paths with Fantastic Beasts I’ll say that Trolls gets the second spot. I’m predicting a 45% drop and a third weekend gross of $19.2 million. Then comes the good doctor with a 60% drop and a third weekend total of $17.1 million, so there’s still a decent chance it does earn the second spot, but since Trolls has been doing so well and it doesn’t have direct competition out this weekend, I’ll say it does just that much better.
Next up is fourth and fifth place, which I think will be fairly close between Arrival and The Edge of Seventeen, which I think second to Fantastic Beasts will have the best debut of the weekend. With some very good word of mouth, I see Arrival dropping only 40% its second weekend and totaling $14.4 million, with the chance that it could do even better than that. For Edge of Seventeen, we’ve seen a good marketing campaign and a pretty solid cast including Hailee Steinfeld, Kyra Sedgwick, and Woody Harrelson at the fore-front and I sense some excitement around it. It also has the highest percentage on Rotten Tomatoes of the new releases with 95%, not that that means everything, but with Bad Moms (2016) being the sleeper hit of the summer for distributor STX Entertainment, they’re hoping this one gets good numbers. I have it at $12.5 million for fifth place, just a tad behind the $13 million tracking has on the film. Opening in 1,945 theaters it should average $6,423 per theater.
Now we get to the other two releases, Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk and Bleed for This. Both films are in fewer theaters, but I see Billy Lynn getting $9.5 million in 1,176 theaters, which should grow as we get closer to Thanksgiving, averaging $8,078 per theater, and Bleed for This getting $8 million in 1,549 theaters, averaging $5,165 per theater. Tracking has Billy Lynn a bit higher at $12 million and Bleed for This considerably lower at $5.5 million. Critics are more fair to Bleed for This, which sits a bit higher than Billy Lynn on Rotten Tomatoes, 63% vs 45%, for what that’s worth.
And before we get to last week’s scorecard, I’ll mention two Oscar hopefuls opening in limited release this weekend: Nocturnal Animals and Manchester by the Sea. The latter is almost a guarantee to be nominated with the former being at this stage an outside shot. Nocturnal Animals will play in more theaters, 37, than Manchester, 4, but keep in mind Amazon is behind that one, so it will play in a few theaters before going onto its streaming site in early 2017. Also worth mentioning is Moonlight, which gets a big bump this weekend and will now play in 650 theaters, or as I like to say, moderate-wide release. Hopefully it will expand further in future weeks and for this weekend it will be within reach of the top ten if it performs well enough.
Okay, and now we’ll take a look at last weekend’s results. In first place was Doctor Strange, which I correctly predicted. I had it earning $38.2 million instead of $42.9 million. In second place came Trolls, which did extremely well, down 24%. I had it at 45% off and earning $25.6 million instead of $34.9 million. In third place it was another correct prediction for Arrival, which did very well, earning $24 million, which was spot on for my prediction. Next up was Almost Christmas, which was a little under my prediction of $19.5 million, earning $15.1 million. And I ended it on a good note also for fifth place, which went to Hacksaw Ridge, earning $10.6 million instead of my $9.1 million, a 30% drop, which is excellent. So for bragging rights, I’m 10/10 so far this month, and while I doubt that holds, and this weekend might have some big surprises, we’ll see how it goes down.
