Weekend predictions: Dominion headed for monster weekend

June 10, 2022

Jurassic World: Dominion posted $18 million from previews and is headed for one of the largest openings of the year. But, even though this is well-established franchise, and one of the most consistent earners in the industry, our models say that there’s still quite a bit of uncertainty over where it will end up by Monday morning.

The challenge in predicting how much Dominion will make this weekend is illustrated by the range of predictions given by using different models for the film. I’ve looked at it in four different ways this morning, and come up with quite a range of results…

Our standard methodology, which uses previous films in the franchise, pointed to an opening weekend around $120 million before we had any information on Dominion’s previews. That was based in part on slightly soft audience tracking compared to expectations ahead of its release. Without that adjustment, our model would point to an opening weekend of $131.6 million. That number rose quite a bit when Universal announced it will be playing in 4,676 theaters, making it the third-widest opening in history.

Another way to get a handle on the potential for a film in a major franchise like this is to see how it’s been doing in international markets ahead of its domestic release…

The international numbers tell a similar story to our domestic model. If it performs similarly in North America to how it’s been doing elsewhere in the world, it should land around $122 million this weekend.

Of course, this morning we got the news of the film’s previews, which gives us some much more concrete evidence on how it’s doing.

Its $18 million from Thursday previews is just a shade below the $18.5 million earned by Jurassic World when it kicked off its $208.8-million opening weekend. That kind of number is theoretically in play, but the performance of Fallen Kingdom, which converted $15.3 million in previews into a $148-million opening suggests topping $200 million would be a major surprise. If we look solely at the preview figures for the previous Jurassic World movies though, an opening around $188 million looks on the cards, which would be well ahead of expectations.

That rosy scenario has to be tempered by the fact that films opening with preview earnings in the region of $18 million haven’t been maintaining that pace in our post-pandemic world. Here’s how all comparable openings since mid-2021 have panned out:

The preview multiplier for films earning between $9 million and $36 million from previews post-pandemic has ranged between 6 and 8. That would translate into an opening weekend between $108 million and $144 million for Jurassic World: Dominion, with our model predicting $114.9 million.

So, where does that all leave us? Simply put, we have three predictions that cluster between $115 million and $123 million, and one that’s a significant outlier. That model, which is based on how previous films in the franchise have performed on opening weekend compared to their previews, points to a weekend of $188 million. My standard practice is to use a weighted average of all our predictions as our final prediction for the weekend. Doing that produces a final prediction of $149 million. I have to say the range of uncertainty is high, though. If Dominion tops $144 million it will have had the best opening weekend compared to its preview numbers for any film since theaters starting reopening. Given the broad appeal of the film, that wouldn’t be a huge surprise, but I also wouldn’t be shocked if it ended up with $125 million by the end of the weekend—still a very respectable number to be sure.

What seems all but certain to me is that we’ll see all films combined earn $200 million or more this weekend. That’s only happened twice since the pandemic: first over the weekend of December 17, 2021 when Spider-Man: No Way Home was reaping a $260-million opening; and for a second time over the weekend of May 6, 2022, helped by $187 million from Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Perhaps most notably, we will almost certainly have a weekend that tops the first weekend in June, 2019, back in the seemingly-but-not-really far-off days before the pandemic.

Bruce Nash

Filed under: Weekend Preview, Jurassic World: Dominion, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness