Weekend predictions: Venom looking at opening in the 60s

Two very different films, super hero actioner Venom: The Last Dance and dramatic mystery Conclave, open in wide release this weekend. The former is looking to cash in on Halloween and stay in theaters long enough to benefit from increased audience sizes going into holiday season. The latter will hope to establish itself as an Oscar front runner with a strong theatrical run and good word of mouth.

Here’s the model’s original take on Venom: The Last Dance:

The model’s prediction is skewed high by the fact that Venom: Let There Be Carnage did excellent business when the market was very weak in late 2021. But the model also thinks the market is very weak right now, after a long series of middling performances at the box office over the past couple of months. Factoring in audience interest, we were looking at an opening around $70 million.

The previews suggest the film won’t get quite that far…

This is a case where the model sees poor previews and effectively decides that a film is also going to be very front-loaded. I personally think it’s being too bearish in this case, and a weekend over $60 million is still more likely. $70 million looks unlikely at this point.

The model’s prediction for Conclave is another roller coaster ride, with audience interest doing most of the heavy lifting to get a prediction as high as $8 million. This isn’t a film that’s going to be relying on a massive opening weekend though, and preview numbers take us back down to around $6 million…

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

$100 million in total this weekend is still in play, if Venom can maintain some sort of momentum over the next few days.

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