Weekend projections: Captain America beats back The Monkey

The Monkey will post the second-best debut ever for Neon this weekend, hitting around $14.2 million on debut. That’s a shade behind our Friday-morning prediction, but a good result nonetheless. It won’t be enough to topple Captain America: Brave New World from the top of the box office chart, as the Marvel hero will hit $30.7 million on its second weekend, according to Disney.

Here are the official studio projections for the three-day weekend (click the image for a full chart of all films reporting so far):

The decline for Captain America on its second weekend is in the top 5 steepest drops for the MCU as of now. Notably, the top nine steepest falls for the franchise have all occurred since 2020:

These kinds of fall indicate that Marvel isn’t drawing in many new customers at this point. On the other hand, earning $141.2 million in the domestic market over ten days tells us how big the franchise’s core audience remains. It will finish the weekend with $148.2 million internationally, per the studio, with its biggest markets the UK, $16.7 million; China, at $13.5 million; and Mexico, with $10.7 million.

The Monkey’s key benchmark this weekend was Longlegs, director Oz Perkins’ previous outing with Neon. That film had the advantage of a Summer release, which undoubtedly helped, but it also caught on virally in a way we haven’t seen (yet) for The Monkey. However, reviews are good, and The Monkey doesn’t have a lot of competition over the next few weeks, so it could have a strong run.

Overall, the market looks soft coming off the Valentine’s Day/Presidents’ Day combo last weekend. Family films are holding up well, but a decline of more than 50% from last weekend is poor. As I mentioned on Friday, last weekend was 18% above the model’s prediction. This weekend will come in 14% below expectations, even after adjusting for an expected slowdown. Worryingly, there isn’t much coming up over the next few weeks that will boost the market much, with the possible exception of Mickey 17.

– Studio weekend projections

– All-time top-grossing movies in North America

– All-time top-grossing movies worldwide

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