Weekend Box Office Predictions: Spider-Man Starts the Second Half of Summer
Hard to believe, but we’re halfway through the summer movie season. This has gone way too fast. We’ve had some great box office successes, surprises, and bombs through the first two months, and I’m sure we’ll have more as we continue, but it’s a safe bet that the first weekend of July starts with a hit: Spider-Man: Homecoming. And it helps that it’s the only new wide release this week. Let’s get going.
So the film that will undoubtedly win the box office this weekend is Spider-Man: Homecoming, which somewhat counts as the 16th venture in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and will likely make it 16/16 of these films opening to the number one spot at the box office. The film bolsters a great cast including Tom Holland, Michael Keaton, Zendaya, Jon Favreau, Donald Glover, Marisa Tomei, and Robert Downey, Jr., to name a few of the headliners, and being a part of Marvel is just a given plus. As if all that isn’t enough, I realized that they started to advertise and do talk shows way in advance. For example, I noticed Keaton advertising on Ellen back in early June! So while they’re playing enough ads and getting a lot of attention, it was almost like they started to early, but still the IP of Spider-Man and the wild success of Captain America: Civil War (2016) where he made his first appearance has skyrocketed interest in Spider-Man again, and the wonderful reviews, currently at 92% on Rotten Tomatoes, also shows that the critics are on its side. All of this is for sure leading to an opening at $100 million plus, and tracking has it at $125 million. And while I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt to it going higher and therefore making it the second highest opening for a solo Spider-Man film, I’m going a bit under tracking at $117 million. In 4,000 theaters that’s leading to a $29,250 per-theater average.
For the rest of the top five, I’m expecting Despicable Me 3 to be in second place. It’s easily the highest grossing family film so far this summer and while I’m sure a lot of the same kids who saw it last week will go to Spider-Man this weekend, the family audiences who are not looking forward to that PG-13 rating will check this one out. I’m going with an even 50% drop and a second weekend of $36.2 million. Third place will likely go to the big surprise from last week, Baby Driver. The word-of-mouth around the film is phenomenal, and I’m expecting a 35% drop and a second weekend of $13.3 million.
In fourth place will be that blockbuster film Wonder Woman. While it does deal with direct competition with Spider-Man: Homecoming, the film has surpassed all expectations and I see a 50% drop and a sixth weekend of $7.8 million. And in fifth place I’m thinking Transformers: The Last Knight. The polar opposite of Wonder Woman, The Last Knight has been a failure here in the States and the overseas markets have been lowered than expected as well. I’m saying another 60% off this weekend and the total will be $6.7 million.
I was on vacation last week, but ahead of the game I put in some predictions in advance, so let’s see how I did on those. In advance, I said Despicable Me 3 would open to $85 million. It didn’t quite hit those highs, and it did fall short of tracking totals at made $72.4 million between Friday and Sunday. While it’s not what Universal was hoping for, it’s still a good result, especially considering the poor results so far for family films this summer. I also had a prediction for Baby Driver. The film opened last Wednesday, and the Friday-Sunday numbers were $20.5 million. Wow! I had it getting $8.5 million, so it more than doubled those expectations. And of course the big loser from last week was The House. Like family films, comedies have had a lot of misses so far this summer. This is the latest one, and my $15 million prediction was left at the way side with an $8.7 million start in over 3,000 theaters. Ouch. Warner Brothers will be feeling that one for a while. Well, that’s all I’ve got for this time, and we’re back on regular schedule now, so we’ll have predictions every week going forward.
