Weekend predictions: Godzilla should repeat on top as Monkey Man looks likely for second place

Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire will stay top at the box office this weekend, as it comes off a mighty $80-million opening weekend. Which movie will come next is much harder to predict, with Monkey Man looking like the favorite after Thursday’s preview numbers came in. The First Omen, meanwhile, looks like it’ll have to settle for something around fifth or sixth place.

Here’s what the model thought of Monkey Man going into the weekend…

This is a case where the model probably isn’t capturing the nuances of the potential audience, because this is an unusual film. It could draw from the large audience for Bollywood movies, and also cross over with action movie fans. After the success of The Beekeeper back in January, something like $20 million seemed on the cards, but $10 million looked like a much safer bet.

The previews number paints a similar picture…

A prediction based purely on previews would be in the region of $12.7 million, but the model settles on a final prediction of $11.1 million once everything is taken into account. This is a hard film to predict though, so I think there’s still quite a wide range of uncertainty even though the models converged on a very similar number.

Here’s our model’s baseline analysis of The First Omen:

On paper, The First Omen was a slight favorite going into the weekend, but it hasn’t been getting a huge amount of buzz, which pulled down our prediction a bit.

That lack of buzz has turned into relatively soft sales on Thursday…

When a movie like this combines relatively soft buzz with a very ordinary Thursday, the model essentially concludes that it will struggle over opening weekend. There’s time for Omen to bounce back, but anything much over $8 million should be considered a victory at this point.

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

Godzilla x Kong looks like it will be off sharply from its opening weekend, and it wouldn’t be a huge surprise if it dropped 60% or more. It has a large margin to work with though, and another weekend atop the chart seems assured.

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