Weekend Box Office Predictions: It’s an Inferno Out There
It’s the eve of the start of the Christmas movie season, and with such high-profile releases next weekend as Doctor Strange and Trolls with Oscar-contender Hacksaw Ridge, some rabid movie fans will wait until next weekend to scope out the films. So our lone wolf in the hunt this weekend is Inferno, the third in the Ron Howard directed Robert Langdon trilogy from the series of books by Dan Brown. We also have a whole bunch of holdovers that will be in the fight this weekend, so let’s get started.
We’ll start with Inferno, which I think will win the weekend, but mainly due to the lack of competition and not based on name recognition. Sure, the first film, The Da Vinci Code (2006) opened to $77 million and Angels and Demons (2009) saw a $46.2 million opening a few years later, but now it’s been seven years and I get the feeling that the energy has left the room for this franchise. The reviews for the film have been pretty bad, and it’s at 22% on Rotten Tomatoes, but still tracking has it at $30 million for the weekend. I’m going below that with a $23.5 million opening weekend. It opens in 3,576 theaters and should average $6,572 per theater.
Next up is the big upset last weekend, Boo! A Madea Halloween. It did much better than I anticipated and scored a bigger opening than any other Madea movie since 2009. However, the average drop for the second weekend for all the films is 56%, so I’ll put the second weekend of Boo! at $12.8 million for its second weekend, off 55%. In third place comes Jack Reacher: Never go Back at $12.5 million, which is off 45% from its first weekend. It did just fine last weekend, and should be decent for its next go-around.
In fourth place I’ll put The Accountant, which did pretty well last weekend, and I’m going for a 40% drop, which would put it at $8.1 million. And to top out the top five, we’ll go with Ouija: Origin of Evil, which was okay last weekend, and I’m going for a 50% drop for its second weekend and a total of $7 million.
As I said, the weekend will be fairly quiet in anticipation for next weekend and the upcoming over-packed Holiday movie season, so that’s about all I have to say for now. Oh, let’s not forget the previous weekend’s box office results. We’ll start with the biggest surprise of the weekend, Boo! A Madea Halloween, which surprised for number one with $28.5 million. I had it clear down in third with $16.5 million. In second place came Jack Reacher: Never go Back, which earned $22.8 million, up almost an even two million from my $21 million prediction. I had it in first. Next up was Ouija: Origin of Evil, earning $14 million, down from $18 million prediction for second place. Yeah, I’ll take the defeat this time, but it felt like all the signs of success were there. Fourth place, though, was correctly predicted for The Accountant, so I had that going for me. It did, however, earn $13.6 million, which is exactly what I had it at, so sure I mix up the top three, but I got something dead on. Fifth place was also correct for The Girl on the Train, falling 41% for $7.1 million, better than my 50% drop $6.1 million prediction. Also opening last weekend was Keeping up with the Joneses, which opened outside the top five at $5.4 million, off just $100 thousand from my $5.5 million prediction. However, then there was I’m Not Ashamed, which really disappointed. It only earned $927 thousand, much lower than my $2 million prediction, and opening in fifteenth place. Quite a bad start, though it did have a small marketing campaign and was only in 505 theaters. I guess next weekend will be a bit more active, not only with the blog but also with the charts. So until then, we’ll see how I do this time.
