Weekend predictions: Blue Beetle headed to the top on opening weekend, but looking underwhelming

August 18, 2023

Blue Beetle should top the box office chart this weekend, but it’s looking like it’ll mimic the performance of Shazam! Fury of the Gods and come in with something around $30 million on debut—another disappointment for the DC Extended Universe following The Flash’s $55-million opening and $108-million run in June and July. Barbie looks headed to second place this weekend, with Strays back in a pack of movies that will earn something in the $9 million to $10 million range.

Blue Beetle didn’t gain much traction with its potential audience over the past few weeks, with our model measuring audience enthusiasm at 80% of what we’d expect. Aside from the mid-pandemic release of Wonder Woman 1984, it’s also the first DC Universe film to open in fewer than 4,000 theaters, which further reduces our model’s baseline prediction.

Even though the model had muted expectations going into the weekend, Blue Beetle didn’t make an auspicious start on Thursday evening…

There’s still some room for the film to come back from this soft start. Its reviews are solid at 76% positive on Rotten Tomatoes, and the audience response has been very good—it’s hitting a 93% audience score. That, combined with interest in the DC franchise could see it through to a weekend over $30 million. Based on how it’s doing so far, anything more than that would be a good result.

The market for R-rated comedies hasn’t been great recently, although No Hard Feelings cracked $15 million on opening weekend and $50 million in total domestically. Strays would be hoping for something along those lines, but its Thursday preview numbers fell short of that kind of mark…

The acid test for comedies is whether audiences will be entertained enough to recommend the movie to their friends. The jury’s still out on this one, but Rotten Tomatoes hasn’t posted an audience score yet, which seems a little ominous, and the critics score is barely over 50%. Unless it picks up some unexpected buzz through the weekend, it looks as though it’ll have a hard time cracking $10 million, and quite a bit less is a possibility.

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

While Blue Beetle will almost certainly top the chart, Barbie won’t have a huge amount of competition and could hold on better than the model currently expects. If it tops $20 million the weekend result could still be close. Behind that, four movies are essentially fighting for third place. Oppenheimer will be losing a lot of premium format screens to Blue Beetle, and the model thinks it’ll take a fairly steep drop.

Also of note, Back on the Strip will open in 1,300 theaters this weekend. It’s mostly come in under the radar—we didn’t get confirmation it’s opening wide until this morning, for example—and it will probably debut with under $1 million, but we don’t have enough tracking on the film to give a definite prediction. MGM’s Landscape with Invisible Hand is also worth watching out for. It debuts in 304 locations.

One good piece of news is that our measure of market strength has hit 85%, which is the highest it’s been this Summer. Even though Blue Beetle and Strays look like they’ll fall short of their goals, we should see another $100-million weekend at the box office, for the 20th time running, although the streak seems likely to end soon.

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Bruce Nash

Filed under: Weekend Preview, The Flash, Barbie, Blue Beetle, The Last Voyage of the Demeter, Meg 2: The Trench, Oppenheimer, Strays, No Hard Feelings, Landscape with Invisible Hand, Back on the Strip, DC Extended Universe