Weekend predictions: The Bad Guys headed for good weekend
April 22, 2022
It’s a busy weekend at the box office, with three new wide releases already reporting Thursday preview results and headed for the top 10, plus the return of two films that grossed over $70 million between them last weekend, and the continued expansion of indie breakout Everything Everywhere All at Once. Going into the weekend, our model thought The Bad Guys should come out on top, and it looks on track to do so. The good news is that all three newcomers are outperforming the model’s expectations so far.
As usual, when we have preview numbers for a film, the model produces two predictions, and our final number is a weighted average of the two. With three new releases, that adds up to a lot of predictions. Here they are in order of expected box office this weekend.
The Bad Guys has come in a bit under the radar, but comes from DreamWorks Animation, whose track record speaks for itself. In pre-pandemic days the studio regularly posted opening weekends over $30 million for non-“franchise” films. In the current market that should translate into something around $20 million.
The film’s $1.115 million in previews on Thursday points to a better number—possibly something in the high 20s. That should be easily enough to win the weekend, and suggests a welcome return of families to movie theaters. Our weighted average prediction is $26.6 million for Bad Guys, although the opening weekend for a family film isn’t especially well correlated to the preview figures, meaning the range of uncertainty is fairly high. Anything under $20 million would be a disappointment given how it’s started out though.
The Northman is arriving on a wave of good buzz, and looks likely to do relatively better compared to the model’s expectations than The Bad Guys. In fact, it could double what the model expected before the preview numbers were published.
It’s unlikely to win the weekend, and our weighted average prediction of $15.6 million actually has it coming in fourth place overall. But good legs could give it a place in the top 3, and it wouldn’t have to do much better to squeeze into second place.
The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent is a hard movie to predict. Its trailer got a tremendous amount of buzz, but it’s quite a while since Nicolas Cage had a starring role in a movie with a wide theatrical release. He’s a beloved star though, and this movie will give him his best opening weekend in over a decade.
The model’s fundamentals prediction and the preview prediction line up quite nicely, but I think that might be coincidence, and its preview results may be flattering to deceive. A weekend over $10 million looks a good bet, but maybe not much more. Our model comes in with a(n unbearably) weighted average of $11 million.
Earnings from the three new movies in the top five should make up for the losses from a weak second weekend for Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 declining again in its third weekend. All of which adds up to a market that will be essentially flat compared to last weekend.
Filed under: Weekend Preview, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, The Bad Guys, The Northman, Everything Everywhere All At Once, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Nicolas Cage