Weekend predictions: Three new entries predicted in top ten, but Thor won’t be challenged at the top

July 15, 2022

Thor: Love and Thunder

This is another busy week at the box office, with four new movies opening nationwide and two films that each topped $100 million on opening weekend going into their second and third weeks in theaters. There’s not much doubt which film will top the chart (spoiler alert: it’s Thor: Love and Thunder), but our model has been working overtime to compile a predicted top ten.

First up, we have Where the Crawdads Sing, a book adaptation that is seeking out the older, more female-skewing demographic that has been so hard to draw back to theaters in the last year or so. Here’s what the model thought of its chances going into this weekend…

Generally, dramas based on books have a fairly modest record at the box office, at least on opening weekend. Given the general weakness in the market, particularly in this sector, the model predicted an opening weekend around $10 million before we had preview numbers for Crawdads. The news this morning that it earned $2.3 million last night paints a different picture though…

Honestly, the preview figures for dramas aren’t especially predictive of opening weekend, with multipliers varying between about 9 and 19. But even a multiplier the same as Elvis’ 8.92 would give Crawdads an opening weekend over $20 million. When combined with its fundamentals prediction, the model ends up putting its opening weekend at $24.2 million, which would be an impressive sum for a film like this nowadays.

Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank is likewise outperforming its fundamentals prediction, based on how its preview numbers have come in, although the difference is much smaller…

To me, Paws of Fury feels like a film that could have fallen completely between the cracks, given it was lined up in competition with Minions: The Rise of Gru and Lightyear. With Lightyear coming in well below expectations, the opportunity opened up for Paws, which it appears to be taking. A major word of caution though: the multipliers for animated films are really all over the place. If it only manages a multiplier of around 10, which I think is still a possibility, it’ll come in with closer to $5 million than $10 million this weekend.

So the jury’s still out for Paws of Fury, but it’s looking promising so far compared to our original prediction.

The final nationwide release with a shot at the top ten is Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris. The model is quite bullish on its prospects…

Films like this that open in around 1,000 theaters tend to post openings in the $1.5- to $2-million range, and with our pandemic adjustment now at 75%, the model thinks $1.5 million is on the cards for Mrs. Harris. It looks like a charming film, and it has the best reviews of the three big new releases, but this feels like an optimistic prediction to me. I personally would expect it to come in somewhere in the region of $1 million, but I’d be happy to be proven wrong.

Here’s how our model thinks the top 10 will work out…

Thor should hold on to the top spot fairly easily, even with a fairly steep drop from its opening, and I don’t think Minions will be seriously challenged in second place. Where the Crawdads Sing looks a solid bet for third place to me right now, which will push Top Gun: Maverick, in its eighth weekend, out of the top three for the first time in its run.

If Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris can crack $1 million this weekend, we’ll have every film in the top 10 above that threshold for the first time since the weekend of May 20, and a line-up of films that offers something for virtually everyone.

Filed under: Weekend Preview, Top Gun: Maverick, Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank, Minions: The Rise of Gru, Elvis, Thor: Love and Thunder, Lightyear, Where the Crawdads Sing, Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris