Weekend Box Office Predictions: Fifty Shades of LEGO Batman: Chapter 2
We have three new releases this weekend, and all three of them happen to be sequels: Fifty Shades Darker, John Wick: Chapter 2, and The LEGO Batman Movie. And it looks like all three films are targeting three key demos: the romantics out there will celebrate Valentine’s early with Fifty Shades, the action nuts will get their fill with John Wick, and the family audiences will build a big number for LEGO Batman. Now it’s just up to me to figure out what films lands where in the box office chart and what they will make.
I think the winner won’t be an obvious one, at least not at this stage, but I figure the family audiences will be turning out big time for LEGO Batman, so I’ll go ahead and put that at number one. It’s a film that seems to have everything going for it: the first film, The LEGO Movie (2014) was a smash hit with critics and audiences and is still popular today, it features one of the hottest superheroes, and its got the critics on its side with 97% on Rotten Tomatoes. The voice cast in an extensive one, including Will Arnett, Michael Cera, Zach Galifianakis, Rosario Dawson, Ralph Fiennes, Jenny Slate, Mariah Carey, and that’s just naming some, plus the lack of family and animated films recently means this one will probably top the numbers the original film earned three years ago. I’m going high with $85 million. Tracking is a bit lower at $76 million, but still 4,000 theaters will be playing it, so that would mean an average of $21,250 per theater.
In second place will be Fifty Shades Darker. With stars Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan, and Kim Basinger being the big drawing for this one. The first film did phenomenal business two years ago with an $85.1 million over the three day weekend. However, there is a scent in the air that the first book in the series was the one everybody read and only die-hard fans read the followups, and if that does holdover for the big screen sequel, we’re probably looking at a number that’s at best 75% of what the first film did, but I don’t think it will even do that. With critics weighing in at 11% on Rotten Tomatoes, that isn’t helping anything, and we’re probably looking at a $50 million opening. Tracking is a bit under that at $46 million, and depending on what the audience reaction is, the word of mouth will make the film sink or swim over next Tuesday’s Valentine’s Day and the coming weeks. It will play in 3,700 theaters and my number would equal out to an average of $13,514 per theater.
Now for John Wick: Chapter Two, whose marketing has, at least in my book, been the strongest and most common of the three. Seriously, the last two weeks every YouTube video I watch has a thirty second ad of the film playing before it. With this and a really strong reaction to the first film, which I wasn’t that big a fan of, like LEGO Batman, I think we’ll see a bigger opening than expected. With Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Common, John Leguizamo, Ian McShane, Ruby Rose, and Peter Stormare in key roles, a 96% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and that strong marketing, I’m anticipating a $38 million weekend, which is much higher than tracking at $23.5 million. One thing to keep in mind, it will only play in 2,900 theaters, a bit less than the other new releases, but still I’m betting on this one to be film for action fans. My opening weekend number would mean a per-theater average of $13,103.
Fourth and fifth place will respectively go to Split and A Dog’s Purpose. I am anticipating Split to earn another $7.9 million as it falls 45% with its fourth weekend and a 50% drop for A Dog’s Purpose, which means a third weekend of $5.2 million, and a total of almost $40 million after three weeks, which isn’t awful for a January release.
Now we’ll take a look at the scorecard from last weekend. I had the number one spot incorrect with Rings. The weekend was won by Split with $14.4 million, which was pretty close to my $16.5 million prediction for Rings. I had Split in second with $12.8 million. Rings ended up taking $13 million for a second place finish. Another incorrect prediction for third place. I had Hidden Figures taking it at $10.5 million, however A Dog’s Purpose had the same numbers but I had it in fourth place. Hidden Figures had to settle for $10.1 million, still a great result. Then fifth place went to La La Land, which, finally, was correctly predicted. I had it earning $7.9 million and it got to $7.3 million, so that’s not bad. So there is room for improvement but I’m getting the numbers almost right or pretty close. We’ll see how some of these high numbers fare this weekend for the new releases.
