Box Office Predictions: the calm before the Avatar storm

This week sees the highly anticipated release of… nothing! In the lead up to Avatar: The Way of Water it seems all other studios have decided to play it safe and not even attempt one big weekend before dropping significantly next week.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t anything to see. If you live in an area with some Indie theaters (basically New York or Los Angeles) you may be able to see the limited releases of Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale starring a soon to be Oscar Nominated (if the buzz is true) Brendan Fraser (for the rest of us normal folk, we have to wait until December 21 before the film goes wide). Or perhaps the Sam Mendes film Empire of Light is more your speed, if you can find a theater that is playing it. Or maybe, just maybe, you have been eagerly anticipating the release of a PG rated version of the Mark Wahlberg film Father Stu this time called Father Stu: Reborn? Although, I kind of doubt an edited down version of a film that opened to just over $5 million on its way to just under $21 million will make any impact on this week’s box office!

The rest of us will just have to make do with the holdovers. Perhaps this is the weekend you finally get out and catch up on Black Panther: Wakanda Forever which should take first place for a fifth week with around $13 million. The last movie to hold the top spot on the charts for 5 weeks was Top Gun: Maverick but that wasn’t consecutive, it had a 13 week gap in-between first place finishes (where it became the first movie to ever top the charts on both Memorial Day and Labor Day weekend.)

If you are in the festive spirit, I’d recommend checking out Violent Night as it is exactly what you’d expect from that title! It has been described as Die Hard meets Home Alone and I can’t think of a better comparison than that, so I won’t! In his review for the film, David Arroyo declared that he loved every minute of the movie. I know that right now there are a million and one new Christmas movies out on the various streaming services, and I can save you the hassle of watching them: the girl and the guy fall in love right as the clock strikes midnight on Christmas as the snow begins to fall! But in theaters, there is only Violent Night to whet your yuletide whistle (that sounded dirtier than I intended it to!) With only another 2 full weeks before Christmas arrives (2 weeks and 3 days to be exact), this one should continue pulling in solid numbers. This weekend should see an over $8 million haul.

The rest of the top 5 should be filled out with Disney’s massive bomb Strange World. The good news for that one is it has maintained small week to week drops, the bad news is: that’s because it opened so horribly a few weeks back! While fifth place will be a dog fight between The Menu and Devotion. Both films are quite excellent (check out the reviews by Chris Bumbray for Menu here and Devotion here) but I think the edge will go to the one with the shorter runtime, which at 107 minutes is The Menu (Devotion clocks in at 139 minutes). 

The only new addition to the top ten this week will probably be the Michael Showalter directed Spoiler Alert which launched last week in six theaters to a little over $83,000. This week sees its theater count upped to around 750 screens. The question will be if audiences will want to spend time watching a film where the entire premise is that one of the main characters dies from cancer?! And that isn’t a spoiler, the film is based on the book Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies. Reviews have been decent (including this one from our own JimmyO) saying that the film is a bit uneven but the performances are strong. Plus I like seeing people like Jim Parsons in roles that aren’t the type they are known for and this role seems about as far away from Sheldon from Big Bang Theory as you could get.

Will you be making it out to theaters this weekend or will the Apple+ release of Emancipation be all you need? Let us know in the comments.

TOP 5 PREDICTIONS:

1. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever- $13 Million
2. Violent Night- $8.5 Million
3. Strange World-  $3 Million
4. The Menu- $2.5 Million
5. Devotion- $2 Million