Weekend predictions: Weapons and Freakier Friday off to flying starts

Weapons and Freakier Friday have both posted good numbers from last night’s preview shows, with Weapons the clear leader between the two with an impressive $5.7 million (the best for an original horror movie since Nope). Freakier Friday’s $3.1 million is nearly double the amount The Naked Gun pulled in from its previews last weekend.

Here’s how our predictions line up this week, starting with our baseline analysis of Weapons…

The buzz around Weapons has been strong for months, and we were anticipating a strong opening. Director Zach Cregger made a name for himself with 2022’s Barbarian, and Warner Bros. has been a bit of a roll with director-led movies as of late.

Looking at the preview figures, Warner’s run is clearly continuing…

The standout comparison here is Sinners, which turned $4.7 million in previews into a $48-million opening back in April. Weapons is getting reviews that are similarly enthusiastic. Could that turn into a runaway performance in theaters? The model takes a conservative view right now, but hitting $40 million on opening weekend would be spectacular nonetheless.

Freakier Friday also looked a movie with good potential based on audience interest…

Its previews are similarly solid…

Historically, comedies have had Thursday-to-weekend multipliers around 10, which puts Friday on pace for a $30-million debut. Haunted Mansion is a counterpoint to that optimism. It had the exact same performance from previews ($3.1 million), and opened with $24.1 million, but far worse reviews and audience scores. $25 million looks like the minimum for Freakier Friday right now, based on that comparison, which again would be a good result in itself.

Finally, Angel Studios’ Sketch opened on Wednesday, which gives us a couple of days of hard data on which we can base its weekend prediction:

Again, $6 million would be a decent result for this film, which should get good word-of-mouth, and might break outside Angel Studios’ usual demographic. A good run will be dependent upon it showing really good legs going through the weekend, and a strong performance next weekend.

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

Getting two movies open to strong numbers is great news at this time of year, and gives a welcome boost to total theater traffic this weekend. Returning films are doing fairly well too, according to the model. It has detected particularly strong daily numbers for Together, which could result in a strong hold on its second weekend. Given its competition with Weapons, and the complicating factor of its Wednesday release, that might prove to be a mirage, and I think it’ll come in lower than the model predicts.

Before we head into the weekend, I wanted to send out a big thank you to everyone who has donated to the site in the past couple of weeks. We’ve been able to put some engineering resources on optimizing the site’s back-end, which seems to have had some beneficial results, and we’re also finding more ways to block the armies of bots that see us as a prime target for quality data. This weekend will be the first big test of how effective the changes have been, and we hope to make more over the coming weeks. If you appreciate the effort, and haven’t donated yet, see below the line for how you can help.

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