Weekend Box Office Predictions: Can Black Widow Defend Her Crown Against Space Jams: A New Legacy and Escape Room: Tournament of Champions?

[ad_1]

Image credits: Disney & Marvel Studios (“Black Widow”) / Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. and Salvatore Totino (“Space Jam: A New Legacy”) / Sony Pictures & CTMG & George Amos & Marc Spicer (“Escape Room: Tournament Heroes”)

After “Black Widow” debuted last week, the midsummer release slate continued to gain traction as theatrical recovery builds momentum in North America.

Exhibitors hope the counter-programming duo in Space Jam: A New Legacy and Escape Room: Tournament of Champions will do just that, but only the former has a clear shot of Marvel’s second-year frame competition — and it could soon be a fight. The reopening of theaters in Ontario, even with seating in place, could be of moderate importance to editors and keepers alike as the Canadian province typically accounts for between 3 and 5 share of the North American box office.

Although Widow saw a sharp drop on Saturday this past weekend, the Marvel movies are showing some stability by the end of the second week. The impact that a movie will be available to Disney+ at an additional cost is an ongoing factor in this new box office climate, but Widow would at least benefit from keeping a significant share of premium screens in theaters for at least another week.

Just five days after the local release, Widow crossed $100 million on Wednesday and did so in pandemic record time (overtaking F9 by three days).

Interestingly, only two of the five previous MCU releases for July held the top spot in their second weekend – 2019’s Spider-Man: Far from Home and 2015’s Ant-Man. The latter was a squeak as Scott’s origin story won Lange led Paul Rudd with her second frame for $24.9 million against Adam Sandler Pixels ($24.0 million) appearance. This might be a relevant comparison this weekend given the similar Pixels audience that has been targeted by the Space Jam revival.

Warner Bros.’ latest hybrid is heading out. It does extremely well in its pre-sale windows while also getting a boost from a strong social media presence thanks to the influential power of LeBron James and the broader NBA field. James alone has more than 141 million followers on Instagram and Twitter. In its pre-social media days, the 1995 film capitalized on the iconic popularity of Michael Jordan combined with the generational appeal of Looney Tunes in order to produce what became a classic family movie.

Space Jam opened to $27.5 million in November 1996 before hitting $90.4 million domestically and $230.4 million globally, numbers that A New Legacy could achieve domestically. The nostalgia play among adults (now parents) fond of the original will need to be matched by the healthy business and interest of today’s kids over the weekend.

It’s these latter elements that offer more wild cards, especially considering the movie’s free-at-home availability for HBO Max subscribers. Warner Bros. played. A major role in cinemas early recovery efforts during the first half of 2021, but the recent stumble by In the Heights raises the question whether the Space Jam sequel might be subject to bloated presales from fans without a significant expansion. The attraction to children outside of urban areas and urban areas should prevent any kind of large imbalances such as heights.

The 33 million trailer views aggregated from the studio’s YouTube pages indicate that youth engagement may be noticeable this weekend. However, some parents remain wary of returning to theaters because vaccines are not yet available for those 12 and younger, while the delta variant of COVID-19 remains a concern for the unvaccinated. As such, Jam’s forecast this weekend is all over the place. Warner Bros. did not provide. Official studio forecast.

Meanwhile, Sony is exclusively going to theaters again with Escape Room: Tournament of Champions. The original film was dormant in January 2019 as it curved $18.2 million onwards to $57 million domestic/$155.7 million worldwide — all at just $9 million in production costs.

We expect the horror sequel to succumb to some diminishing returns, specifically due to the abundance of horror films released in short order this summer and somewhat cooler social media metrics. However, it is still in a low-risk position financially with a budget of only $15 million. Sony is expecting between $7 million and $8 million this weekend. The PG-13 rating would be appropriate for teens and young adults, but it wouldn’t have much of an excellent screen footprint due to the big movies on the market.

On the Showtimes dashboard, Black Widow unsurprisingly tops the sample share of weekend local shows with 27 percent, followed by 18 percent in Space Jam: A New Legacy and 11 percent for the Escape Room sequel.

Warner Bros. did not provide. No official site stats before the weekend or premium screen details on Jam, but it won’t be doing previews on Thursday. Part 2 of Escape will begin at 3 PM.

Not to be missed this weekend will also be releases of Focus Features and Neon. The former will distribute Roadrunner: An Anthony Bourdain Film at 926 locations and has had encouraging advance sales for the genre. A finish in the top ten seems possible based on those trends. Meanwhile, Neon Pig will be releasing nearly 600 theaters (based on dashboard predictions).

Open Weekend Domains

Escape Room: Tournament of Champions Opening weekend range: $7-12 million Gross domestic range: $18-31 million

Space Jam: A New Legacy Opening Weekend Range: $20-30M Gross Domestic Range: $60-100M

This weekend versus last week

Boxoffice Projects This weekend’s top ten films will be down 26 to 35 percent from the pandemic era reported last weekend that grossed $117.5 million from a total of ten films.

Weekend forecast

Movie Dealer Week 3 Weekend Expectations, Expected Local Gross Through Sunday, July 18, Number of Locations, Percentage Change from Last Wknd Space Jam: A Legacy New Legacy Bros. Pictures $26.4 million $26.4 million ~ $3950 Black Widow Disney/Marvel Studios $25.9 million 131,900,000 4275 -68% Escape Room: Tournament of Champions Sony Pictures/Columbia $8,800,000 $8,800,000 2,815 NEW F9: The Fast Saga Universal Pictures $6,600,000 154,400,000 3,365 -42% The Boss Baby: Family Business Universal Pictures $4,900,000 $45,000,000 3,443 -45% The Forever Purge Universal Pictures $3,700,000 $35,700,000 $2,725 -48% A Quiet Place Part II Paramount Pictures $2,300,000 155,100,000 -27% Cruella Walt Disney Pictures 1,400,000 $83,800,000 1,175 -41% The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard Lionsgate $1,100,000 $37,000,000 -33% Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain Focus Shows $1,000,000 $1,000,000 926 new

All forecasts are subject to change before first confirmation of Thursday previews or Friday estimates from studios or alternative sources.

*Revised upon studio confirmation of weekend locations

Theater numbers are being updated as studios have confirmed.

For press and media inquiries, please contact Shawn Robbins

Follow Boxoffice PRO on Twitter

[ad_2]