Weekend projections: One Battle After Another and Gabby’s Dollhouse hoping for good word-of-mouth after middling debuts

Ironically, Warner Bros.’ run of $40-million-plus openings for non-sequel movies will end with a film that industry insiders and critics are lauding as an awards-season front-runner. One Battle After Another will have the distinction of giving Paul Thomas Anderson his best weekend ever, besting the $4.9 million earned by There Will Be Blood during its run back in January 2008, but the new film will need exceptional legs to justify its higher production budget ($140 million vs. $25 million for There Will Be Blood), and marketing costs. Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie will likewise need great word-of-mouth to become a hit.

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 math for One Battle After Another is challenging at this point. With Warner Bros. having sunk $200 million or more into making and marketing the film, it’ll need to earn something around $250 million at the box office worldwide to break even, even assuming a long life in the home market and on TV. That’s roughly five times its global opening of $48.5 million. It’s not out of the question, but it looked for a while as though it could have enough momentum going into opening weekend to deliver $40 million domestically and $80 million worldwide on its debut, which would have made profitability much more likely.

The studio will most likely still be largely happy with the outcome. One Battle… is earning an A CinemaScore, and its core audience (males 25–34, per WB) are giving it an A+, and represent 32% of the total audience. Overall, the audience is 70% male, and 60% under 35 years old. Critics are giving it a 97%-positive score on Rotten Tomatoes, and audiences rate it at 87% positive. All that points towards excellent word of mouth, and the lack of a huge opening next weekend (with the arguable exception of The Official Release Party of a Showgirl, which will appeal to a very different demographic) should give it a good start to its run in theaters.

Gabby’s Dollhouse is likewise going to rely on an excellent audience reception (an A+ CinemaScore and 95% Audience Score) translating into good word-of-mouth (or repeat visits), and a big multiplier on its $13.7 million opening. Gabby’s Dollhouse wasn’t cheap for a youth-targeted film, with a reported budget of $32 million. With $5.7 million internationally, the movie will end the weekend a bit short of $20 million in total. While it won’t have been fantastically expensive to market, it’ll need to multiply its opening by four or five to hit profitability. There are ancillary benefits to putting a kid-friendly film like this in theaters, with merchandise sales and greater awareness of Gabby’s outings on Netflix being obviously helped, particularly given that the film hits the mark with its fans. Like Warner Bros. with One Battle After Another, Universal are probably fairly content with this result, even though it doesn’t look at this point as though it will justify spending the same kind of money in the future on Gabby’s Dollhouse movies.

The unfortunate side-effect of slightly soft openings for the two big films this weekend is that we’re looking at a down weekend for the market compared to our original prediction, and to the same weekend last year. None of the returning films helped shore up the market, and notable drops for Him and A Big Bold Beautiful Journey are particularly damaging.

The good news is that we have a lot of new films and re-releases coming up. No less than eight films are claimed to be opening wide next weekend, for example. That should help momentum build as we enter the crucial period for the industry at the end of the year.

– 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