Box Office Predictions: ‘Alien: Romulus’ Looks To Dethrone ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’
Box Office analysis is provided by Daniel Garris of BoxOfficeReport.com.
Weekend Box Office Predictions: August 16th, 2024 - August 18th, 2024
After another strong frame last weekend, the August box office will look to remain strong this weekend thanks in part to the release of Disney and 20th Century's Alien: Romulus. The R-rated sci-fi horror film directed by Fede Álvarez represents the seventh installment of the Alien franchise (the ninth if counting the two Alien vs. Predator films). Alien: Romulus is a standalone film set in between Alien and Aliens, and stars Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux and Isabela Merced. Alien: Romulus is playing in 3,885 locations this weekend, is playing on IMAX screens and has Thursday preview shows beginning at 3PM. Critical reviews for Alien: Romulus have been good, and on the average they are the strongest of any film in the Alien series since 1986's Aliens. With a strong level of pre-release buzz, the good critical reception and the addition of fans of Álvarez, Alien: Romulus should have no problem zooming past the $36.16 million start of Alien: Covenant back in May of 2017. BoxOfficeReport is predicting that Alien: Romulus will start out with $48.0 million this weekend. That would represent the second largest unadjusted opening weekend ever for the Alien franchise, and would be within shouting distance of the $51.05 million start of Prometheus back in June of 2012.
After leading the box office each of the past three frames, Disney's Deadpool & Wolverine is set to claim second place this weekend. Deadpool & Wolverine continued to hold up well last weekend, as the blockbuster sequel declined 44.5 percent to take in $53.77 million. And on Tuesday Deadpool & Wolverine passed the $500 million domestic mark. While Deadpool & Wolverine should be in store for a respectable hold this weekend, the film may not hold up quite as well this weekend as it did last weekend. In addition to the new direct competition from Alien: Romulus, Deadpool & Wolverine will also be losing the remainder of its IMAX screens and showtimes to Alien: Romulus this weekend. Look for Deadpool & Wolverine to decline 47.0 percent this weekend to gross $28.5 million, before likely having a significantly better percentage hold next weekend.
Sony's It Ends With Us is coming off of a break-out opening weekend performance which saw the romance film debut in a close second place with $50.02 million. While critical reviews for It Ends With Us have been mixed, the film looks to be going over far better with audiences after receiving a healthy A- rating on CinemaScore. Initial midweek grosses for It Ends With Us this week have also been very promising. At the same time, as an adaptation of a popular novel with a large built-in fanbase, there will be some initial front-loading for It Ends With Us. On top of that, the film looks to be losing a fairly significant amount of its average showtimes per locations this weekend, which will make it difficult for It Ends With Us to have a really strong hold this weekend. A bit of that loss in showtimes will be helped made up for by the film opening in an additional 128 locations this weekend (for a total location count of 3,739 locations this weekend). It Ends With Us could decline a respectable 52.0 percent this weekend to gross $24.0 million, before potentially stabilizing further next weekend.
Seemingly coming a bit out of nowhere this weekend is Fathom Events' 15th Anniversary re-issue of LAIKA's Coraline. At this time last year, Fathom Events re-issued Coraline in semi-wide release for just a total of four days (on two Mondays and two Tuesdays), with the stop-motion animated film still taking in an impressive $7.15 million from the limited overall run. This time around Coraline is getting a much wider release, with a proper opening weekend and is scheduled to play in theatres for two weeks. A film being re-issued so soon after the previous re-issue would typically experience a decrease in demand, but it appears that isn't going to be the case with Coraline this weekend, thanks in part to last year's re-issue being such a limited release (especially in length). Given the larger scale of this year's re-issue, it feels reasonable that the four-day start for Coraline (which opens on Thursday) could potentially double the total gross of last year's four-day re-issue. BoxOfficeReport is predicting respective three-day weekend and four-day starts of $10.5 million and $14.0 million for Coraline (assuming that Thursday's gross is reported separate from the weekend gross and not as a preview gross). That would bring the lifetime unadjusted domestic total gross for Coraline fairly close to the $100 million domestic mark.
Meanwhile, Universal's Twisters will likely continue to hold up well again this weekend. Last weekend Twisters declined 34.2 percent to place in third with $15.00 million. Twisters could hold up even better this weekend, thanks in part to holding onto a very high percentage of its locations and average showtimes per location this weekend. A decline of just 31.3 percent would transfer into a $10.3 million take for Twisters this weekend.
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