Weekend projections: IF holds on strong through the weekend to land $35-million opening

After a relatively quiet night on Thursday, IF is performing well through the weekend, and Paramount is projecting a respectable $35-million opening for the family-friendly comedy this weekend. With The Strangers: Chapter 1 coming in ahead of expectations, and The Blue Angels hitting the top 10 during its brief IMAX run, this weekend is shaping up considerably better than it looked on Friday morning.

Here’s how the weekend numbers look as of Sunday morning (click on the image for the full chart of films reporting so far)…

The performance of IF is solid for a family film not based on previous IP, and an A rating from CinemaScore means word of mouth will be strong. That should help its legs, even with The Garfield Movie coming up next weekend. A $35-million debut means it should cruise past $100 million domestically, and it should play decently internationally too (we don’t have numbers on that yet). If it can hit $200 million worldwide, that will go a long way to justifying its $110-million production budget.

That said, IF looked as though it was capable of earning closer to $50 million this weekend, and the fact that it missed that number is another sign that the market is struggling going in to Summer. There hasn’t been much to draw family audiences into theaters this year, with Kung Fu Panda 4 the only other PG-rated film to top $10 million on debut so far in 2024. After Garfield next weekend, Inside Out 2 drops in mid-June, and then Despicable Me 4 on July 3. Having something to take the kids to every two or three weeks is the bare minimum for sustainability, and things look even thinner after the beginning of July.

There are some things to cheer in this weekend’s numbers though. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is having a good second weekend, and will pass $100 million domestically today. Our model predicts it will end its run with $160 million, which is a step up from the pre-pandemic performance of War for the Planet of the Apes. Kingdom will earn another $40.6 million internationally this weekend, taking its international cume to $136.3 million, and worldwide gross to $237.5 million. Its biggest markets are China, with $20.4 million; France, $13.8m; Mexico, $12.0m; and the United Kingdom, with $10 million to date.

Also performing well this weekend is The Strangers: Chapter 1. The reboot of the horror franchise is just beating our Friday prediction, and right in line with our baseline prediction of $12.4 million. That’s a good number for a horror movie, particularly compared to other recent releases in the genre. Imaginary, with a $9.9-million opening and $28-million domestic run, is the top-grossing horror film of 2024 so far. The Strangers should beat that number comfortably. It’s early days, but the model is predicting a final domestic gross of $37.5 million. The audience, according to PostTrak, was 55% female and 69% 18–34. Two more installments in the franchise are promised for later in the year, and this weekend’s result justifies Lionsgate’s bet on the franchise.

Overall, we’re looking at an uptick in total box office this weekend, which looked unlikely when we ran the numbers on Friday morning. Once all films have reported tomorrow, we should see a total for the weekend in the neighborhood of $100 million. If we hit that number, it’ll be the first time since the weekend of March 29, and only the sixth time we’ve managed the feat in 2024. Twenty weeks into the year, that’s a sobering statistic.

– 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