Weekend predictions: Thunderbolts and Sinners fight for top billing

Thunderbolts (The New Avengers) will do battle at the top of the box office chart with Sinners this weekend. Thunderbolts* (is it still OK to call it that?) enters the weekend as favorite, with our model predicting a 59% decline from its opening, while Sinners is expected to fall just 18% in its fourth weekend. If those numbers hold up, the two films will both be hovering somewhere in the high 20s to low 30s over three days. With Thunderbolts holding on to PLF screens, it most likely has the edge.

While those two fight for the title this weekend, four new wide releases arrive in theaters.

Looking to come top among the new releases is Clown in a Cornfield, from RLJ Entertainment (which had some rebranding of its own this week to align it under the IFC Entertainment Group umbrella).

The film didn’t do spectacular preview numbers on Thursday, but it is leading among the new releases…

Something over $4 million would be a great result for RLJ, and it looks as though they will have their best opening weekend by a large margin.

Next up is Fight or Flight from Vertical Entertainment…

It was virtually tied with Clown in a Cornfield on Thursday, which puts it on course for a good weekend too…

This is another movie where $4 million would be a terrific opening weekend for the distributor.

Juliet & Romeo from Briarcliff Entertainment is a total wildcard. Our model doesn’t think it will do huge business, but our audience tracking says otherwise…

We don’t have preview numbers for this one, and I suspect it will fall short of our final prediction, but only time will tell on this one.

Last up is Shadow Force from Lionsgate. Given the distributor, this should be the biggest new release, but clearly Lionsgate isn’t make the film a serious priority.

Its previews point to a very low opening

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

It looks unlikely we’ll hit $100 million in total this weekend, with the new releases lining up in the bottom half of the top 10. Thunderbolts* looks like the clear favorite, but Sinners remains strong.

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