Weekend Box Office Predictions: The Party Goes On
Now we enter the second weekend of December, and we have a new wide release and a limited release expanding into wide this weekend, Office Christmas Party and Miss Sloane. Also expanding into wide release is Nocturnal Animals, but it likely won’t land a spot in the top five. We’ll also have some daunting numbers from holdovers Moana and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Let’s dive in and see what’s to come this weekend.
I’ll go ahead and put Office Christmas Party on top for the weekend. The main reason: star-power. With Jason Bateman, Jennifer Aniston, TJ Miller, Olivia Munn, Kate McKinnon, Courtney B. Vance, and Jillian Bell being heavily featured in the trailers. Plus, it’s closer to Christmas now than Almost Christmas was this time last month, and that heavily affected that movie’s performance. Critics aren’t pouring down on this one as much as I thought they would be, it’s at 43% on Rotten Tomatoes, so that might keep a few on the fence away. With 3,210 theaters playing it, I’ll go with an opening weekend of $19.5 million. That should be enough for first place, and is above the tracking for the film, which has it hitting $17 million opening weekend. It should average $6,075 per theater.
In second place will come Moana, and it did have a 50% drop last weekend, and is looking at a similar result this weekend. I’ll put it at a 45% drop off from last weekend, which would put it at $15.5 million for its third weekend. In its fourth weekend Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them will drop to third, off another 50%, $9 million for the weekend.
Fourth place will be a battle between Miss Sloane and Arrival, with Allied and Doctor Strange also in the mix to fill out the rest of the top five. I’ll go ahead and put Miss Sloane in there for fourth. Again, it does have some star power to it: Jessica Chastain, Mark Strong, Michael Stuhlbarg, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, John Lithgow, and Sam Waterston headline the cast, and dependable director John Madden is behind the camera, and critics are pretty positive on it. It does have 65% on Rotten Tomatoes, and Chastain has some buzz to her for Best Actress. It will now play in 1,598 theaters, and I have it reaching $5 million. That would mean an average of $3,129 per theater. Tracking has it hitting $8 million, which sounds way too high for me. There just isn’t that much buzz, not enough to creep toward the top three. Keep in mind, Arrival will now be in over 3,000 theaters for the first time this weekend, and it did only fall 36% last weekend, so if it falls another 40% it would land at $4.3 million, and if Miss Sloane doesn’t deliver, it could usurp it for fourth place.
Now for Nocturnal Animals, which again will not be a player for the top five, but should still top $2.5 million for its 1,262 theaters, averaging $1,981 per theater. It’s at 72% at Rotten Tomatoes, and the reviews go like this: it’s a movie you really admire or a movie you can’t stand. Big stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Amy Adams, Michael Shannon, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Isla Fisher, Armie Hammer, and Laura Linney headline this one, so that might help bring in some folks. Also worth mentioning is the limited release of Best Picture frontrunner La La Land, and while it does only appear in 5 theaters this weekend, it will probably have one of the biggest per theater averages of the year. At the moment the plans are for the film to expand into wide release next weekend.
For closing comments, let’s take a look at last weekend’s results. First place did go to Moana, which fell 50% and landed at $28.2 million. My guess was $25.4 million, so it had a better weekend than I was guessing. Second place was also correctly predicted for Fantastic Beasts, and that fell 59%, earning $18.1 million. I had it at $18 million even, so that was very, very close. Arrival was an oddball guess for third place, and it paid off. I had it falling 35% and hitting $7.4 million. What do you know? It fell 36% and hit $7.2 million. Fourth place was very close for Allied, which fell 44%, getting another $7 million. Another close one for me, $6.9 million falling 45%. Man, I was on fire! Doctor Strange was a good closer for fifth, falling 51% and earning $6.6 million. I had it a bit lower at $6.1 million for 55%, so that was still pretty good. Also worth mentioning is Incarnate, which didn’t land a great number: $2.5 million. I had it a bit higher at $2.9 million, so even I was overgenerous for that one. Damn, what a good weekend. Remembering how this weekend last year we had the release of In the Heart of the Sea (2015), which died at the box office, perhaps because its poor timing. It came out the weekend before Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015), which came out the next weekend to nearly $250 million. While we do see the release of Star Wars: Rogue One next weekend, it’s not looking at $250 million, rather something closer to $165 or $180 million tops, so this weekend shouldn’t see the same result as last year, hopefully, or else you may as well throw these picks out the window.
