Weekend predictions: Barbie still the champ, but a tight race brewing for second place

August 4, 2023

Barbie

Barbie will have no trouble staying at the top of the box office charts this weekend. After cruising past $400 million yesterday (the 9th-fastest film to reach that landmark), it will end the weekend over $450 million domestically still with a long run ahead of it. The battle for second place will be tight though, with Oppenheimer, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem and Meg 2: The Trench all having a legitimate shot at taking the silver medal.

To see how close the race is for runner up, here’s what our model thinks of Mutant Mayhem’s performance, given its first two days in theaters:

Although we don’t have a huge number of comparisons, Wednesday openers generally don’t post more than twice their Wednesday+Thursday box office over the three-day weekend. Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning was a recent exception to that rule, and matching that film’s 2.3 multiplier would result in a weekend around $34.7 million for the turtles. That’s about the limit of what it can hope for, and it looks likely it’ll land closer to $30 million. Its five-day opening, at around $45 million, is a pretty good result, and the film could have decent legs given that lack of competition over the next few weeks.

For Meg 2, our model looks no further than the previous film in the franchise, which opened with $45.4 million back in 2018. Current market conditions suggested it would come in somewhere close to $30 million, according to the model.

Its Thursday preview numbers are right in line with that expectation…

The optimistic prediction is that Meg 2 will perform like Meg 1, and earn around 11 times its previews over opening weekend. That would give it $36.3 million by Sunday. However, sequels tend to be more front loaded, and Meg 2 isn’t getting the best scores from critics or audiences so far (although its Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score, at 66%, is more than double its terrible 27% critics’ score). So something a bit short of $30 million looks fairly likely.

Here’s what the model thinks the top 10 will look like.

Barbie is arguably getting some competition from Mutant Mayhem this weekend, which may pull it down a bit. But $60 million is probably the low end of its potential, and there’s no sign it’ll be challenged for top spot.

Oppenheimer could end up anywhere from second to fourth, but it looks like the favorite to end up second with our model predicting it’ll earn $34.4 million this weekend. It’ll pass $200 million today after just 15 days in release. It too has a long way to go at the box office, at least until it starts losing premium screens to Blue Beetle on August 18.

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Filed under: Weekend Preview, Barbie, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem, Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One, Meg 2: The Trench, Oppenheimer