Weekend predictions: The Conjuring set to bow out with franchise-record weekend

The Conjuring: Last Rites scared up $8.5 million from previews yesterday—the best result for a horror movie since Five Nights at Freddy’s clocked in with $10.3 million in October 2023. The “final” Conjuring film should top The Nun’s $53.8 million to have the best opening for the franchise. Our Friday-morning prediction thinks it could go higher than that.

Here’s our initial analysis for Last Rites, taking into account its reported theater count.

The model was already quite bullish going into the weekend, partly thanks to the fact that The Devil Made Me Do It opened at a time when the theatrical market was still in the process of reopening at the tail end of the pandemic. The model adjusts for that, and actually thinks that film was the strongest Conjuring film relative to theatrical demand. This outing also benefits considerably from opening in a formidable 3,802 theaters—about the same as The Nun’s 3,876, and the second-most for the franchise.

Its preview numbers are huge by the standards of R-rated horror:

In fact, only It: Chapter Two and 2017’s It have had better previews among R-rated horror films, according to our records.

That sets up a huge opening weekend. A Thursday-to-weekend multiplier of 6.33 will be needed to beat The Nun’s $53.8-million opening, and only two films in the list above failed to hit that number. Even if the model is coming in a little hot, $60 million this weekend looks like a good bet.

Meanwhile, Hamilton provides some counter-programming, and is likely going to slot into second place on the chart, based on its previews…

There aren’t many comps for this one, and it’s quite possible that last night’s number was mostly driven by hardcore fans, which could substantially reduce the multiplier for the whole weekend. Something around $10 million looks like a possibility, but it wouldn’t be a huge surprise to see the musical stage performance come in short of that. Musicals do have long legs and enthusiastic repeat viewers, however, so there’s quite a high degree of uncertainty in this prediction.

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

With all the returning films coming out of a slight uptick thanks to Labor Day last weekend, we might see some steep drops on the chart when we get the numbers on Saturday and Sunday. The model partially accounts for that, but drops of 40% or more for all the returning films are quite likely, in my opinion.

Those nuances will be a rounding error, however, compared to the great opening for The Conjuring.

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