October 31st, 2021
There was something for everyone in movie theaters this weekend, but the combination of Halloween falling on the weekend and too much competition made going tough for the six films either opening, expanding, or being re-issued in wide release. The competition hit Dune a touch harder than our model expected, but it will easily remain the top film at the box office, with $15.53 million taking it to $69.4 million in total after 10 days. With another $21.4 million from international markets, it now has $292.1 million worldwide so far.
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October 17th, 2021
Halloween Kills is continuing the good run of results at the domestic box office this weekend with a very solid opening, which Universal is projecting will just clear $50 million. That’s easily ahead of Friday morning’s predicted $41.2 million, and the second-best weekend for the 43-year-old franchise, only surpassed by the 2018 incarnation. It also means a hat-trick of $50-million-plus weekends to start October.
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October 10th, 2021
After posting record-breaking preview numbers on Thursday, No Time to Die has shown surprisingly weak legs over the remainder of the weekend, and United Artists is projecting it will earn $56.007 million this weekend. While that’s below what seemed possible as of Friday morning, it’s a very solid number for the pandemic era, and almost exactly the same as our model’s original prediction of $56.8 million. That counts as a victory at the end of the day, albeit one that feels a bit diminished given its strong start. Curiously, by almost every measure, it looks like a film that should have performed well through the weekend, and it might yet prove to have long legs.
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October 8th, 2021
No Time to Die got off to a great start on Thursday evening, earning a reported $6.3 million from previews, the best for the franchise, and beating the $5.25 million Spectre’s earned back in 2015. That’s an encouraging result, and there’s no question the film is on course for an excellent weekend, but No Time to Die presents an unusual challenge for our prediction model. So much so, that I’ve compiled predictions using three different methods this morning. One using our regular model, one using comparisons to the international performance of No Time to Die and its two predecessors, and a final analysis based on the preview results.
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October 3rd, 2021
Venom: Let There Be Carnage will set a new pandemic-era benchmark this weekend, with Sony Pictures projecting a stellar $90-million opening weekend as of Sunday morning, easily eclipsing the $80-million debut of Black Widow back in July. That number also represents a very solid 7.8 times the movie’s Thursday-evening preview number, which suggests good word of mouth. The good news doesn’t stop there, with this weekend’s other domestic openers, The Addams Family 2 and The Many Saints of Newark both doing better than predicted, No Time to Die opening with spectacular (for the pandemic era) numbers internationally, and Dune continuing to do well around the world.
First, here’s how the domestic numbers look this morning…
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October 1st, 2021
A critical month for the theatrical industry has started with some promising news: Venom: Let There Be Carnage posted a very solid $11.6 million from “preview” screenings on Thursday evening, the second-best result from previews during the pandemic, and not far behind Black Widow’s $13.2 million. Sony Pictures, while presumably very happy with how things are going so far, are urging caution when extrapolating that number out to the whole weekend. Their current projection for the weekend is towards the high end of the $50 million to $60 million range, with a preview-to-weekend multiplier around five.
Here’s what our model has to say about Venom’s prospects, along with this weekend’s other new wide releases and returning films…
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