Box Office Predictions: ‘Five Nights At Freddy’s’ To Spook The Box Office
Box Office analysis is provided by Daniel Garris of BoxOfficeReport.com.
Weekend Box Office Predictions: October 27th, 2023 to October 29th, 2023
Universal and Blumhouse's Five Nights at Freddy's is set to have a break-out debut at the box office this weekend. The PG-13 horror film directed by Emma Tammi and starring Josh Hutcherson, Elizabeth Lail, Piper Rubio, Mary Stuart Masterson and Matthew Lillard, is an adaptation of the popular Five Nights at Freddy's video game series. Five Nights at Freddy's is opening day-and-date this weekend, theatrically and via streaming on Peacock. The film will be playing in 3,675 locations this weekend and has Thursday preview shows beginning early at 2PM. Even with the day-and-date release, there is still a very high level of demand to see Five Nights at Freddy's in theatres over Halloween weekend, as the film looks to have become an event for horror fans. The film's PG-13 rating is no doubt a key component when it comes to this weekend's likely break-out performance. With that said, even further break-out potential for Five Nights at Freddy's could be limited at least somewhat this weekend from the mentioned day-and-date release, from likely built-in initial front-loading towards the film's opening day performance and from the film's largely poor critical reviews (which may have more of an effect beyond opening weekend). BoxOfficeReport is predicting that Five Nights at Freddy's will debut with an impressive $69.0 million this weekend. That would represent the third largest opening weekend of all-time for a video game based film and the sixth largest opening weekend of all-time for the month of October (just ahead of the $67.00 million start of Black Adam in October of last year).
AMC Theatres Distribution's release of Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour concert film is coming off of a very healthy second weekend performance which saw the film decline a sharp, but reasonable 64.2 percent to take first place with $33.21 million. While the concert film will likely experience another sharp decline this weekend, it is also likely that Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour concert film will stabilize at least a bit from last weekend. And given the sizable gap between Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour concert film and Killers of the Flower Moon last weekend, Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour concert film will probably stay slightly ahead of Killers of the Flower Moon in this weekend's domestic box office rankings. Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour concert film could decline 57.8 percent this weekend to place in second with $14.0 million.
Last weekend saw Paramount and Apple's Killers of the Flower Moon debut in second place with $23.25 million. That was towards the lower end of consensus expectations for the critically acclaimed Martin Scorsese directed film. This weekend should see Killers of the Flower Moon benefit from its strong critical reviews, as well as from its good word of mouth (the film received a healthy A- rating on CinemaScore) and from holding onto its IMAX screens. Furthermore, past collaborations between Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio have tended to have had back-loaded performances at the box office. On the down side, Killers of the Flower Moon looks to be losing a noteworthy percentage of its non-IMAX showtimes this weekend (which will especially hurt given the film's 206-minute run-time) and displayed some relative initial front-loading last weekend. A very solid second weekend decline of 45.4 percent would transfer into a third place take of $12.7 million this weekend for Killers of the Flower Moon.
Also opening in wide release this weekend is Angel Studios' After Death. The distributor's first post-Sound of Freedom release is a documentary film about near-death experience survivors, which was directed by Stephen Gray and Chris Radtke. After Death is opening in 2,605 locations this weekend, which is especially wide for a documentary film, and has Thursday preview shows beginning at 5PM. The film's distributor has indicated that pre-sales for After Death have been strong. Earlier this year Angel Studios' His Only Son debuted with $5.50 million from 1,920 locations. With the wider launch and the distributor's increased profile after the break-out performance of Sound of Freedom, After Death may be headed for an opening weekend slightly higher than that of His Only Son. Look for After Death to place in fourth this weekend with a healthy debut of $6.0 million.
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