Weekend predictions: Terrifier looking at surprise box office triumph

Cult horror sensation Terrifier 3 goes mainstream this weekend, and it looks like a strong bet for topping the box office chart. A month ago, that would be a shock result, with Joker: Folie à Deux expected to be shooting for something over $40 million in its second outing. Instead, Joker most likely won’t hit $20 million, and Terrifier will have the opportunity to take advantage of its opportunity. With six other films getting wide releases or expansions this weekend, we’ll see a big shake-up on the chart.

Given how many films are coming out this weekend, this will be another “data dump” Friday, with a lot of charts, but not much commentary.

Terrifier’s debut is so far out of line with previous outings in the franchise that we are only using its previews for our prediction. Those look very promising, although cult films can sometimes have very front-loaded weekends. Its weekend win isn’t assured, but it does go into the weekend as the favorite, according to the model.

Saturday Night has had a platform release, with two weeks in a very limited number of theaters before going wide this weekend. Its numbers so far don’t look spectacular, and it could well fall short of the model’s expectations.

The Apprentice is the film that comes closest to having a “normal” release this weekend, as far as the model is concerned.

It’s fair to say The Apprentice is looking soft going into the weekend. As White Bird showed last week, previews can be a poor predictor of how a film will turn out over the whole weekend. My expectation is that The Apprentice will finish below $2 million on debut.

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

This is, to say the least, a crowded weekend for new releases. As well as the films that we’ve run our prediction model on, there’s also Average Joe from Fathom Events and Vettaiyan, a Bollywood film that made about $1.1 million on Thursday. Even though we don’t think those two films will hit the top 10, we’re still looking a five new entries at the top end of the chart.

In the face of all that, it seems unlikely that Joker will fall by only 54%, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it finish third for the weekend. If Terrifier trails off a bit too, we could well have a down weekend at the box office.

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