Box Office Predictions: Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse swinging to an Impressive Opening

This weekend sees the highly anticipated release of Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse. Early estimates for the film put Spider-Verse in the $80 million dollar range, but that was three weeks ago, and it appears those numbers may have been a bit off. When you consider something like The Super Mario Bros. Movie coming out and absolutely obliterating all expectations, and this being the first PG rated animated film to come along since then, I think a $100 million opening is the absolute minimum for what this film can do this weekend with $110 million being a bit closer to what I expect. That is actually a pretty bold prediction when you consider Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse opened up with just $35.3 million back in 2018. The thing with that one is: it had such great word of mouth that it totaled over $384 million worldwide and went on to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Film. Those types of accomplishments can only build anticipation for a sequel and that sequel is finally here! And if early word of mouth is any indication: this one is even better than the original (you can check out our own Chris Bumbray’s 9/10 review here). I already have my tickets secured for tonight’s Dolby Theater showing. I hope to see some of you there, I’ll be the fat guy in the back chowing down on some popped corn and a delicious Icee, layered 3-strong with Coke, Cherry and Blue Raspberry!

With last week’s Little Mermaid performing pretty strongly, despite the wave of review bombing it saw, the question this weekend will be how well it can sustain that momentum. That is especially important for this film as it appears, contrary to other Disney Live Action remakes, this one will be making the bulk of its gross stateside with the international numbers not to the level of other comparable films. With a $250 million budget before an over $200 million marketing spend, this one, to pull a water pun, is swimming upstream. If the film can maintain in its second weekend, it should be able to hit its break even point, but at this point it appears the film is heading towards a loss, a small one, but a loss nonetheless. The big x-factor here is the fact that the Chinese market seems to have turned their back on The Little Mermaid having made just $2.5 million there, compare that to the $53.4 million that Aladdin was able to secure in China and you see the discrepancy. But I must say this news shouldn’t deter anyone from seeing the film who wants to see it as I personally found it to be quite enjoyable with some of the best 3D of the last few years. With the film losing most of its premium screens to Spider-Man, I think Little Mermaid will see a fairly sizable decline, losing around 60% of its audience with around a $38 million weekend

But if mermaids with talking crabs and super-heroes traveling through multi-verses aren’t your thing, than you are in luck because there is another new release coming to a theater near you that is meant to give you bone chilling scares. The Boogeyman is a PG13 adaptation of the classic 1973 short story of the same name by legendary horror author Stephen King that was originally meant to debut on the Hulu streaming service before being given a last minute theatrical push. Reviews for the film so far have been middle of the road, leaning positive, including a 6/10 from our own Chris Bumbray who said it lacked any big scares but worked as a serviceable horror movie geared primarily towards a teen audience. Horror films have actually been doing quite well for themselves the past few months with titles like Smile, M3GAN and Evil Dead Rise all proving to be massive hits. Im not quite sure The Boogeyman will soar to those same highs, especially facing some pretty stiff competition. Horror films are generally front loaded, so a $15 million weekend isn’t out of the realm of possibility, but I’ll go a bit conservative with my prediction and put it around $13 million. 

The remainder of the top five will be your holdovers with Fast X and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 duking it out as the titles have played a game of musical chairs with their chart positions throughout the week.

Do your weekend plans include taking in a delightful feature film? If so, let us know what you plan on seeing gin the comments section and don’t forget to check back in with us on Saturday when we have a brief update on the box office numbers.

TOP FIVE PREDICTION:

1. Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse– $110 Million
2. The Little Mermaid– $38 Million
3. The Boogeyman– $13 Million
4. Fast X– $12 Million
5. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3– $10 Million