Weekend predictions: Freaky could be a pandemic-sized hit

November 13, 2020

Freaky

One of the curiosities since theaters started to reopen in the late Summer and early Fall is that the movies being released have not really targeted the demographic one would expect to be most likely to actually go to theaters: people in their teens and twenties. Instead, we’ve mostly seen thrillers, which tend to skew older, and family movies, which obviously skew younger. The most obvious exception to this rule is The New Mutants, which opened with $7 million back in August. This weekend, Freaky is looking to pull off a similar result. If it over-performs, it has a shot at beating Mutants, and having the second-best opening of the pandemic era.

Over the last two weekends, Come Play and Let Him Go have slightly exceeded expectations. As noted in last week’s weekend round-up, these good results have slightly increased our model’s pandemic adjustment, which estimates the number of moviegoers comfortable with going to theaters, from 33% to 36%. That helps boost our prediction for Freaky by about $450,000 compared to where it would have been two weeks ago.

Freaky is also helped by the relative strength of the horror comedy subgenre, which has produced hits like Zombieland and Happy Death Day in recent years. Within the horror genre, comedies are a little more sensitive to reviews, but Freaky is looking good on that score.

Our model doesn’t adjust for factors like reviews or trailer views yet, simply because there haven’t been enough new releases during the pandemic to get a reliable signal from the data. Those numbers look objectively good for Freaky though, so an opening somewhat above our prediction wouldn’t be a surprise. The main factor working against it is the dreadful COVID case count in the US right now. That will most likely start to drag on box office returns at some point.



Among returning films, Let Him Go seems to have a lock on second place, assuming it declines by 48%, which is par for the course these days. Overall, the top six should be up from last weekend to somewhere close to $12 million.



- Theater counts: Freaky debuts as this week’s widest release

Filed under: Weekend Preview, The New Mutants, Come Play, Let Him Go, Freaky