Every New Year brings headlines of all the new movies hitting theaters that year that excite people. Most of those titles come from the summer and winter months, with a few mentions for spring release movies. Do you know what month has almost no mention in those articles? January! There are several reasons for that. First, January generally sees strong holdover numbers from the big Holiday blockbusters that many studios tend to steer clear of. However, the holidays of 2023 didn’t produce an Avatar: The Way of Water-sized hit the way 2022 did. To be fair, it did produce Wonka, which may not be a near $700 million domestic grosser, but it has still shown some solid numbers over the past few weeks. Second, NFL playoffs. There is simply no other event that commands Americans’ attention more than the run-up to the Super Bowl, a television event that nearly every year is ranked as the highest-rated program on TV, with last year’s big game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles pulling in a massive 115.1 million viewers, making it the most watched television program in the history of TV!
So yeah, studios know that releasing a big movie on a weekend when most people are on their couch watching the best teams in the NFL duke it out would be an idiotic move. How else can you explain that this weekend sees zero new releases? In a world where studios stake out their opening weekends sometimes a decade in advance, this weekend, January 26-28, 2024, was deemed a weekend not worth putting anything new out into the world. I’m sure they knew that the San Francisco 49ers would be playing this weekend and figured everyone would be cheering them on. It’s the only logical conclusion I could draw!
So, with that said, you can expect this weekend to look a lot like last weekend, which looked a lot like the weekend before, with Mean Girls more than likely set to take first place for a third weekend in a row with around $7 million in receipts. However, there is one movie that is hot on its tail, and that is the Jason Statham/ David Ayer collaboration The Beekeeper, which has seen solid numbers since its debut and, during the week, actually landed in first place at the box office. Since that film is more adult-oriented, I don’t think it will be the weekend champion, as adults are more likely to hit a weekday screening than head to theaters on the weekend when the teenage crowd is in the theater doing their Tik Tok’s and snap chats in the middle of the movie (yes, I’m old!) That is why I think Beekeeper will stay in second, but only by a slim margin, with around $6.5 million in receipts. You can check out Tyler Nichols’s 7/10 review of Mean Girls here and his 7/10 review of Beekeeper here.
Third place will go to the aforementioned Wonka as families continue to embrace this Paul King-directed musical prequel to the tune of $5.5 million. While this won’t be the weekend it does it, you can expect Wonka to join the $200 million (domestic) club soon, which is quite the feat for a film that opened at $39 million. Don’t let it be said that word of mouth isn’t what makes any movie sink or swim.
Speaking of word of mouth, one of the best word-of-mouth hits in recent memory should keep its magic going this weekend as the R-rated romantic comedy Anyone But You will see a weekend in the $4.5 million range, which would represent a sub 20% drop. This really has been the story of the past few months, as these types of films tend to open modestly and then fade away. Audiences are simply telling others that this Sydney Sweeney/ Glen Powell rom-com is worth their time and money. As I have said over the past few weeks, this isn’t a movie that reinvents the wheel. It simply knows exactly what it is and provides audiences with a feel-good, if predictable, tale of two people falling in love. When I watched it, it felt like a spiritual successor to Wedding Crashers, which is great company to be in as many people find it to be one of the funniest films ever made.
If there is a movie that could give Anyone But You a run for its number 4 spot, it is those damn birds from Migration, as this is another film that opened to less than stellar numbers ($12.4 million) but has seen great word of mouth (and a real lack of competition) propel it to strong domestic numbers as this weekend it looks to cross that magical $100 million mark finally. I do think Migration may have the edge on Anyone But You for similar reasons I mentioned above: families tend to hit theaters on the weekend, giving Migration the edge with around $4.6 million.
Outside of the top five, you will start to see some of the Oscar Nominated films see their anticipated bumps, with the biggest benefactors being American Fiction (which I found to be a hilarious and heart-felt story with genuinely earned nominations for Jeffrey Wright and Sterling K. Brown as well as Cord Jefferson’s adapted screenplay) and Poor Things which will hopefully see Emma Stone pick up her second trophy as I found her performance truly transformative and not over-praised the way some other nominated performances seem to be.
Some theaters are taking the opportunity to re-release Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer on IMAX screens to give audiences one last chance to see the film in the biggest and best way possible (I took that opportunity earlier this week, even though I own the film on 4K disc, I couldn’t pass up seeing this genuine masterpiece in theaters for my fourth time!) Or perhaps a different kind of Oscar Nominee is what you are looking for, and in that case, you can check out Godzilla Minus One Minus Color as the recently minted Oscar Nominee (for Best Visual Effects, the first ever nomination for the 70-year-old franchise) sees a one week only re-release to theaters with a new black and white version of the film.
Will you be making it to theaters this weekend? If so, let us know what you plan on seeing in the comments, and don’t forget to check back on Saturday when we have a brief update on where this weekend’s box office numbers are heading.
TOP FIVE PREDICTIONS