Weekend projections: Send Help stays top as four new releases hit the charts

Send Help stays top at the box office this weekend, with an excellent (for Super Bowl weekend) drop of 48% from its debut. The survival thriller will land around $10 million, for a 10-day total of $35.8 million. Solo Mio is falling a little short of our Friday-morning prediction—and really only a little short—to land second. The difference between the two films is the over-performance of Send Help, not any under-performance from Solo Mio. Meanwhile, Bleecker Street/Crosswalk’s Stray Kids: The DominATE experience will post an excellent fourth place (and claim the best theater average of any movie in the top 10), and two other new releases, Dracula and The Strangers: Chapter 3, land in the top 10.

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

Final results for the weekend will depend quite heavily on the audience for today’s Super Bowl, so we might see some surprise under- and over-achievers compared to the studio projections above. Overall, though we’re looking at a weekend about in line with expectations. Unfortunately, expectations were quite low, with the studios avoiding this weekend and the new releases looking to attract audiences not much interested in football.

Angel Studios should be very happy with the result for Solo Mio, which had a budget reported at $4 million. Assuming marketing costs around that order of magnitude, the film is already well on the way to being profitable, and Valentine’s Day weekend should help it too.

Iron Lung will drop about 67% this weekend, which is about in line with expectations for a fan-driven film. Melania, which is essentially another fan-driven film, will also fall 67%. Markiplier’s hit will end the weekend with something a bit over $30 million in the bank. Amazon MGM Studios are licking their wounds with just $13.4 million to date for a film that cost $35 million to promote.

Stray Kids: The DominATE experience is the biggest success story of the weekend, and marks a great debut for Bleecker Street’s new Crosswalk event cinema division. Internationally, it is headed for $13.248 million in territories handled by UPI, another $227,000 in Korea, and a worldwide total of $19.125 million. Among other highlights, it will top the chart in Mexico this weekend with $2.1 million, and enjoy the best opening for a K-POP film in Germany, with $1.6 million.

Dracula’s opening, at $4.5 million is the best ever weekend for Vertical Entertainment, beating a record set by We Bury the Dead as recently as the weekend of January 2. A strategy of opening movies on weekends where studios fear to tread seems to be paying off.

The biggest disappointment of the weekend is The Strangers: Chapter 3. Lionsgate is projecting a $3.5-million weekend, which is at least a little better than our model predicted on Friday.

Outside the top 10, two limited releases are doing excellent business. A24’s Pillion looks set for around $240,000 from just four theaters, while Neon’s Sirat is headed for $136,000, also from four venues.

– 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