This weekend, or should I say week (due to Independence Day, the weekend is now six-days long) Disney are releasing their third and final Marvel Cinematic Universe film of the year, with ‘Spider-Man: Far From Home’.
The film is a direct sequel to ‘Avengers: Endgame’, and will be hoping to have a halo effect from the $355M-budgeted epic, and it seems to be working.
The film opened five days earlier than anywhere else in China, where due to the cancellation of domestic competition, let ‘Far From Home’ reach for the sky with a $111M opening weekend in the Middle Kingdom.
This, of course, is a great sign for the Disney film when it comes to the states, and the rest of the world, and the film should be past $500M by the end of Sunday globally.
In the United States, tracking is all over the place, with Sony estimating a $155M six-day, whilst others are going as high as $200M. It’s extremely hard to predict this one because there are literally no comparison films on this scale that opened over six-days.
I suppose one of the comparisons available is 2005’s ‘The War Of The Worlds’ by Steven Spielberg and Tom Cruise. OK, that was fourteen years ago, and opened over five days, not six, but we’ve got to make do.
From previous years, there is always a downturn in attendance on Independence Day itself, but people will use the days before or after to go see a film. Like ‘Annabelle: Comes Home’ last weekend, the weekdays are more important than the actual weekend, as they will indicate if this one is closer to $200M or $150M.
Looking at jumps between first and second films of the MCU, ‘Iron Man’ to ‘Iron Man 2’ jumped 31% on its opening weekend, ‘Guardians Of The Galaxy’ to ‘Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol.2’ jumped a massive 55% (largely thanks to the May release date), and ‘Thor’ to ‘Thor: The Dark World’ jumped 31%.
With ‘Avengers: Endgame’, I think the jump will be approximately 35-40%, slightly higher than most of the MCU films is, however some of that jump will decrease due to people deciding to see it on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday. For that reason, I’ll decrease the jump to 20-25%.
For three days, that would give the Tom Holland-Jake Gyllenhaal film a $140-146M three-day weekend, which sounds a bit too high but let’s stick with it.
Now, ‘The War Of The Worlds’ took $21.5M on the first of July, then dropped 32% for $14.5M on Thursday the second.
The first day-to-Independence Day drop will be interesting, because if people black out from the film, then they’ll just see it on the weekend instead. From comparisons such as ‘Despicable Me 3’ and ‘The War Of The Worlds’, we’re probably looking at $50M from the weekdays.
Finally, we get a grand total of $190-196M over the six day opening weekend. This was the higher end of industry expectations, and it seems like that $200M over six days is not out of the question. Despite all of this, it will hit an extremely hard second weekend drop come next weekend.
You’d be surprised to hear that there is actually another release over five days, from Wednesday to Sunday. That film is A24’s ‘Midsommar’. The film is a two-hour plus horror-thriller that is in a similar style to ‘Hereditary’ last year, in the way that it is a tasteful horror-thriller. Due to this, the film holds excellent reviews and 87% on Rotten Tomatoes – but will that be enough to provide a decent alternative?
Well, over the Independence Day weekend stretch, believe it or not it is possible for more than one film to thrive, of which we will see once we get onto the holdovers. Its hard to see this one breaking out, due to the weird nature of the film, but I’d say a $15M five-day is on the cards here.
Now, how will the holdovers fare? ‘Toy Story 4’ of course is entering its third weekend of release, and took another $8.3M on Monday for $245M after eleven days. That’s a strong figure, and is still pacing neck-a-neck with ‘Toy Story 3’.
Now, thanks to Pixar’s OCD-ness of releasing every film on the same weekend every year, we have tons of comparisons.
‘Toy Story 3’ dropped 49% over three days to take $30M, but over four-days it took $43M. ‘Finding Dory’ took $41M over three days (a drop of 42%) but took $51M over four. It’s still hard to predict due to the fact its over six days, but we’ll do our best.
A 52% drop over three days would give the fourquel $27.5M over three-days, but on the other three days? Well, looking at ‘The Incredibles 2’ as a comparison, a 25% jump on Tuesday would give the Pixar film another $10.5M, and on the Wednesday we should see a 30-35% downturn, giving the film another $7-7.5M, and on Independence Day on Thursday, another 25% drop is likely for $5.5M. That would give the film a $51M six-day Independence Day weekend, or $23.5M over Tuesday-Thursday and $27.5M over Friday-Sunday. By Sunday then, Woody and all of his friends would be at $296M, which would still be just about enough to stay ahead of ‘Toy Story 3’. If this scenario occurs, then $375-390M is on the cards in the US, and internationally the film should be at around $625M worldwide by Sunday.
‘Annabelle: Comes Home’ will be hoping for a good frame as well, and is probably looking at $15M over the next six days, similar to ‘Midsommar’, which should be enough for $50M after twelve days of release.
And finally ‘Yesterday’ will be hoping to continue the good form it had last weekend, when it over indexed and took $17M. The film stands at $20M coming into the six day stretch, and something along the lines of another $17M across the six days would be a good estimate, maybe even $20M if people turn to it for an alternative to big films. That would be good for $40M after ten days, a strong figure for the $26M-budgeted film.
Here are the weekend predictions below (six days are in brackets)
1. Spider-Man: Far From Home – $141M ($193M)
2. Toy Story 3 – $27.1M ($50.5M)
3. Yesterday – $9.5M ($18.5M)
4. Midsommar – $8.5M ($15.5M)
5. Annabelle: Comes Home – $8.2M ($15.1M)
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