Weekend predictions: Dog Man to stay top as Heart Eyes and Love Hurts battle football’s big day

Barring a major upset, Dog Man looks set to top the box office chart this weekend, with slasher horror movie Heart Eyes and action comedy Love Hurts fighting over the scraps on Super Bowl weekend.

Here are the model’s detailed predictions for this weekend’s new wide releases. First up, Heart Eyes.

This horror pic’s preview numbers are a shade better than the model’s fundamentals prediction, and it looks as though $10 million is a possibility. However, the model doesn’t factor in the likely effect of the Super Bowl on Sunday. Assuming that takes its toll, something around $8 million would be a reasonable result from this starting point.

Love Hurts originally looked as though it had more potential than Heart Eyes, but it has lost pace going into the weekend, and its previews are softer still.

As noted last week, the model might be getting too aggressive when a film misses its previews target, and under normal circumstances I’d be saying that the final opening prediction looks a little on the low side. With this film likely to get clobbered on Sunday though, $5 million seems about right at this point.

Here’s what the model thinks the top 10 will look like.

Of the three movies technically vying for top spot, Dog Man is probably the film that will be least affected by the Super Bowl. It has shown decent strength at the box office over the past few days, and the model is predicting a relatively low drop-off from its opening number.

Even a strong hold for Dog Man won’t save the weekend as a whole, and this will be a slow weekend in theaters.

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Bruce Nash, bruce.nash@the-numbers.com