Weekend predictions: The Batman will easily win the weekend, even with a steep drop

March 11, 2022

After earning more than ten times as much as any other film last weekend, and having no competition from new wide releases this weekend, The Batman will cruise to victory at the box office this time around. In fact, it could drop by 90% from its opening and still win the weekend. So the more interesting question is how much it will fall exactly.

The rule during the pandemic era has generally been one of “the higher they fly, the harder they fall.” Blockbuster openers like Spider-Man: No Way Home have been drawing in huge crowds on opening weekend, but then falling sharply in their second outing. No Way Home itself dropped 67% in its second weekend. Venom: Let There Be Carnage declined 65%. Black Widow dropped 68%. The rule of thumb seems to be that the audience on the second week is almost exactly one third of the crowd on opening weekend.

A two-thirds fall for The Batman would put it at $44.7 million this weekend. Our model is being a shade more generous than that, projecting a 60% decline. The bottom line is that anything over $50 million would be a very good result.

Here’s how the model thinks the weekend will stack up for the top ten…

Unsurprisingly, the top ten will look very familiar, and remain in largely the same order as last time out. The lack of competition means that most films should hold well. The opening up of the economy as we come to the end of the Omicron wave should help too, although there’s some potential downside from the economic shocks from the Ukraine war. The model doesn’t factor either of those things in, although it’s probably safest to assume that they will roughly cancel each other out. All in all, the fact that a $78-million weekend at the box office feels like a quiet one is another small tick of the box that we’re getting back to a more normal market.

Bruce Nash

Filed under: Weekend Preview, The Batman, Spider-Man: No Way Home