Analysis: Preview and Friday Numbers Point to $225 Million Weekend

December 19, 2015

With a jaw-dropping $120.5 million opening day safely in the bank, thoughts turn once more to the potential opening weekend for The Force Awakens. An all-time record seems virtually guaranteed, but how high could the film actually go this weekend? Is $250 million likely? $275 million?? Fortunately, we have enough data from previous blockbuster openings to have a reasonable idea of the answer. The signs point to something around $225 million, but the range of uncertainty is still quite high.

I’ve based this analysis on the films that earned over $10 million from Thursday preview shows. That excludes films that were released on a Wednesday or Thursday. It also, coincidentally, excludes films that opened on holiday weekends. Note that I’ve subtracted Thursday’s preview numbers from Friday’s total.

The sample size is 16 excluding Star Wars, which isn’t as large as one would like, but still should give us a reasonable idea of what to expect. When I bring out every analyst’s favorite tool, the linear regression, these numbers line up very nicely, with R² 0.96 (the closer to 1 the better). Here’s the formula:

If we plug Star Wars’ numbers into the formula, we get a projected opening weekend of $223,871,495. And, with R² of .96, we can be pretty sure that’s a fairly good estimate. But how good?

Let’s look at how the formula fared with the 16 previous examples:

In general, the predicted numbers line up very closely with the actuals, with most being within a few percent. I fact, I would go so far as to say that The Force Awakens will probably open within 5% of $223.9 million, or somewhere between $213,210,948 and $235,065,070. With 13 of the 16 previous films having opened within 5% of their predicted number, one could boldly predict that there’s an 80% chance it’ll fall between those numbers.

Playing with statistics is a dangerous game though. Being a little more cautious, I would note that Furious 7 fell more than 10% short of its predicted opening, and Guardians of the Galaxy exceeded its prediction by over 8%. If we use those numbers as markers, there’s about a 90% chance that Star Wars’ opening weekend will fall between $207,161,798 and $250,910,010.

Yep, there’s still a small chance that we won’t see the all-time record broken this weekend. For evidence of that, note that Star Wars did less during Friday itself than Jurassic World. I think it’s unlikely it’ll fall that far short of current expectations—perhaps a 5% chance. However, I also think it’s equally unlikely to top $250 million, based on what we’ve seen so far.

With everything taken into consideration, my bet would be on a weekend of $225 million, plus or minus $10 million.

Bruce Nash, bruce.nash@the-numbers.com

Filed under: Analysis, Star Wars Ep. VII: The Force Awakens, Star Wars