Weekend Box Office Predictions: Will Suicide Squad Finally Fall?
Last weekend Suicide Squad became the fifth film this year to hold the number one spot for three weekends in a row, following Deadpool (2016), Zootopia (2016), The Jungle Book, and Finding Dory. This weekend, though, has a lot of new films opening in wide or semi-wide release. Just to be clear, wide is anything in 1,000 theaters or more, semi-wide is anywhere from 800-999 theaters, moderate is 250-799, and limited is 1-249 theaters, at least that’s how I sort it out. So what do Deadshot, Harley, and the other members of the rag-tag team have to face off against this weekend?
We’ll start with Don’t Breathe, the film going into the widest release this weekend. The horror genre has had a fair amount of success this summer with The Conjuring 2 hitting $100 million domestically and Lights Out coming up on $65 million. Don’t Breathe has been pretty far off the radar for a majority of the summer, but in the last couple of weeks the marketing campaign has picked up and is now in full-force, and the critics have been proclaiming it to be among the best reviewed films this year in the horror genre. Tracking has put the film in the $9 million sights, which sounds pretty low to me. I’m going to say it catches the wave the other horror hits this summer have and reaches $13.5 million. The theater count is 2,900, so the average per-theater should be about $4,655. If it places first or second will depend entirely on the drop that Suicide Squad has.
Even the haters of Suicide Squad have to admit the film has been doing very well at the box office. For a bunch of non-starts for the DC universe who have never been on the big-screen before and some pretty nasty reviews, the film is coming up on $270 million domestically. The film also had a little over a 50% drop last weekend. I see a fourth-weekend drop of 45% this time around, which would be $11.4 million. If Don’t Breathe doesn’t hit the way I think it will, it could easily take up that top spot once again. I just happen to think with horror being as strong as it has been it’s time for the big guy to fall.
After the top two spots, it gets a little harder to predict what will fall where and how much they will earn. I’m going to say the next three spots will be holdovers. For the third spot I’m going to put my money on War Dogs. Seeing as it performed the best of the openers last weekend and the word-of-mouth has been pretty good I’m predicting a 45% drop for a second weekend total of $8 million. Next up I’ll put Sausage Party in fourth with a third-weekend finish of $7.7 million, down an even 50%. Finally I’m going to predict a great second weekend for Kubo and the Two Strings with a 40% drop and a total of $7.5 million.
Next up we’ll discuss Mechanic: Resurrection, the latest from Jason Statham. The first film opened to $11 million, but I don’t see this one topping it. I just don’t feel a lot of buzz around it, and usually the late-August action films don’t open very well. Tracking has it opening close to $8 million, which I think will be pretty close. I’ll say $7.5 million for the weekend, tying with Kubo. Critics have not been able to view the film, which is not a good sign. With the theater count being 2,200 the average would be $3,409.
Now we’ll talk about the non-starters for the weekend, the semi-wide releases who are new this weekend. First we have Hands of Stone, opening in 810 theaters. Critics are mixed and like Don’t Breathe, the marketing campaign has been picking up as of late. It should fetch around $3.5 million with $4,321 per theater. Then there’s Southside with You, which picked up a fair amount of buzz from Sundance this year, but I just don’t feel any sense of excitement. A theater count of 806 and a finish of about $2 million is in store with the average being $2,481. We also have Hell or High Water expanding from moderate to semi-wide release this weekend with a new theater count of 909 theaters this weekend. It has been doing gangbusters business in it’s limited run and now is looking forward to a big boost this weekend and should earn at least $4.5 million. It could even do better than that. A $4.5 million weekend would be about $4,950 per theater.
A lot of activity going on this weekend, but how about how well I did last weekend? Well, Suicide Squad did top last weekend and earned $20.8 million, which was more than I expected. My prediction was $19.5 million. Sausage Party did land the second spot, but it dropped off more than I expected at 54%, or $15.4 million, lower than my $18.8 million prediction. War Dogs did come in third place as predicted, but managed $14.6 million. My $17 million prediction was off 14%. Ben-Hur became a story because of its poor opening, and my fourth place finish prediction was off the mark. It opened in sixth with $11.2 million instead of my $13.5 million forcast. It was Kubo and the Two Strings that took the fourth spot with a $12.6 million finish. I had it in fifth with a $12 million even prediction, so I was only off by $600 thousand or 5%. Overall that wasn’t too bad. I touted last weekend as a tough one to call, but with so many repeats expected to do good business and a few new releases or expansions doing close business it could come down to some pretty small differences between the films. It’ll be a good one to watch!
