Weekend projections: Smile 2 lands solid $23-million opening

Smile 2 is headed towards a very respectable $23-million opening weekend, according to Paramount’s Sunday-morning projection. A24’s romantic drama We Live in Time is also performing well on its wide expansion.

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

Smile 2’s opening will land within $1 million of the first Smile movie, which bagged $22.6 million on debut in 2022. That film went on to earn $106 million at the domestic box office and $217 million worldwide. It’s a good bet that the new installment in the franchise won’t have quite the same legs at the box office, but it will have the advantage of a two-week run leading up to Halloween and competition only from Terrifier 3.

The new Terrifier had a fairly modest decline in its second weekend, coming in just slightly behind our prediction, and it should have a good run through the end of the month too.

We Live in Time shows that Andrew Garfield and Florence Pugh are bankable talent, and is a welcome hit for A24 after a mostly quiet 2024 so far (with the notable exception of Civil War). The drama will have growing competition over the next few weeks as more awards hopefuls hit theaters, but it has made enough this weekend to justify further expansion from its current 985 theaters.

Most other films are landing close to our model’s prediction this weekend, aside from Joker: Folie à Deux, which the model expected to collapse completely this weekend, but will lose “only” 69% of its box office from last weekend. That will be of little comfort to Warner Bros.. In fact, the only comfort the studio will get from this one is a sizable tax write-off.

– 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