Weekend predictions: Black Adam hoping to top $60 million on debut
October 21, 2022
We are slowly pulling out of the doldrums at the box office, but (to mix metaphors) there’s still a long climb ahead. Black Adam is poised to post the biggest opening weekend since Thor: Love and Thunder debuted with $144 million over the weekend of July 8, but it won’t come anywhere near that figure. In fact, based on what we’re seeing so far, it won’t manage half of Thor’s opening number, with $60 million looking like the benchmark for the movie based on the current market conditions and its $7.6 million in previews on Thursday. Ticket to Paradise will likewise have the biggest opening for a romantic comedy in a long while, without entirely setting the world on fire.
Here’s what the model thought of the Black Adam’s prospects going into the weekend.
What really stands out on the chart is how every movie in the DC Extended Universe since Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice that introduces a new character or gives an existing character a standalone movie has done worse than the one before it. Birds of Prey’s $33 million was really disappointing in this context, and Black Adam should bounce back a bit from that. But the model’s underlying assumption that a DC Universe film like this should open with around $100 million seems optimistic at this point.
What’s really holding down the fundamentals prediction is that the model thinks only a little over half the normal audience is going to theaters. That might be overly pessimistic (it feels like it to me, by the way), and our audience tracking boosts the prediction a bit. At the end of the day, to me, $62 million felt like a soft prediction going into the weekend.
But then the Thursday preview numbers were right in line with that expectation.
Our preview comparisons model looks for films in the same genre that had previews between half and twice that of the new release, and super hero films that earn around $7.6 million from previews end up with about eight times that over the weekend as a whole. That points to a weekend very close to $60 million, and the previews and fundamentals models basically line up.
The bottom line is that $60 million looks right going into the weekend. Some relatively soft reviews mean the film could fall a little short, but Dwayne Johnson’s presence may make the film a little review proof. He has a knack of bringing in around $60 million on opening weekend (see Jumanji: The Next Level’s $59.3 million debut, Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw’s $60 million, and even Moana’s $56.6 million). It looks like he’ll do it again.
The model didn’t think much of Ticket to Paradise’s prospects going into the weekend…
Superstars though they may be, George Clooney and Julia Roberts don’t have a history of producing massive opening weekends, but what really drags down the prediction for this movie is that it’s a romantic comedy. That’s a genre that was struggling before the pandemic and hasn’t shown much sign of recovering since. Marry Me is perhaps the best benchmark, and that opened with $7.9 million back in February.
The Thursday preview numbers improve the outlook though…
The big caveat with this analysis is that romantic comedies don’t earn much from their previews, which means that it’s hard to use them to predict opening weekend. Still, $1.1 million is more than twice what Marry Me earned on its first evening, and more like the number posted by Yesterday. $17 million feels like a good target for Ticket to Paradise, which would be a definite victory, even though the film had a reported $60-million production price tag.
Here’s what our model thinks the top 10 as a whole will look like…
The best news in this chart is that we should see a $100-million weekend for the market as a whole for the first time in 13 weeks. Black Adam might disappoint a little, but the strength of the other films in the chart should take us over the line. With Halloween becoming more of an influence, some of the horror movies could outperform the model’s prediction, and Halloween Ends has a good shot of coming second if Ticket to Paradise softens as the weekend goes on.
There’s not much here to suggest that the model’s estimate that the market is at little more than half strength is far off, unfortunately.
Filed under: Weekend Preview, Black Adam, Ticket to Paradise, DC Extended Universe, Julia Roberts, George Clooney, Dwayne Johnson