Weekend estimates: strong hold for Free Guy keeps it top for second weekend
August 22, 2021
Free Guy will fall just 34% in its second weekend, according to Disney’s Sunday-morning projection, and a weekend total of $18.79 million will be enough to keep it at the top of the box office chart. PAW Patrol: The Movie will come in with a solid $13 million in second place, but the other openers are doing much more poorly, leading to a down weekend for the market as a whole.
Free Guy’s sophomore drop is unusually small, even in recent history. The Suicide Squad lost 71% of its audience on its second weekend, and even a family-friendly film like Jungle Cruise was down 55% in its second outing. Strong word of mouth and limited competition undoubtedly helped Free Guy, but its exclusive theatrical window will take a lot of the credit. The second weekend is the province of more casual fans of a film, and if someone hears that a film is worth watching and can only do so in a movie theater, well, the results seem to speak for themselves. We now have enough data on theatrical-only and hybrid releases to draw some conclusions about how those releases affect the opening weekend and subsequent decline of films, and I’ll be adding those factors into the model shortly—watch this space.
PAW Patrol’s performance is a welcome return to form for family movies, which led the way in the early days of the reopening but have lagged recently. In some ways, we seem to have come full circle, with PAW Patrol’s $13 million comparing to Tom and Jerry’s $14.1 million back in February.
The other new releases all posted figures well below the model’s expectation. Reminiscence was hit badly by weak reviews and its availability on HBO Max. The Protégé and The Night House generally got a favorable reception though and still underperformed. The weakness of those three films is definitely cause for concern, and our model’s estimate of the pre-pandemic audience now attending theaters will decline from 53% to 51% as a result of their performances.
Overall, however, the combined box office for all films will be just 1% away from the model’s prediction. There’s an element of luck in our prediction being that close, of course, but it does suggest that this weekend’s numbers are a reflection of Free Guy having a broad enough appeal to draw people away from the likes of The Protégé, The Night House, and Reminiscence. Even in unusual times, getting a movie into theaters that people are excited to see pays dividends.
Bruce Nash, bruce.nash@the-numbers.com
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Filed under: Weekend Estimates, The Suicide Squad, Jungle Cruise, Free Guy, Reminiscence, The Night House, Tom and Jerry, The Protégé, PAW Patrol: The Movie