NORTH AMERICAN OPENING WEEKEND PREDICTIONS:
- Suicide Squad – Warner Bros. – August 5th, 2016 – $120-130 million
- Pete’s Dragon – Buena Vista – August 12th, 2016 – $32-37 million
- Sausage Party – Sony/Columbia – August 12th, 2016 – $25-30 million
- Ben-Hur – Paramount – August 19th, 2016 – $15-18 million
Why Suicide Squad will make more money in its opening weekend than Guardians of the Galaxy did:
Marvel Studios’s Guardians of the Galaxy made $94m in its opening weekend back in August 2014. It is still, at the time of writing, the biggest opening weekend ever in August, and the next film on that list is Bourne Ultimatum, which made $69 million in its opening weekend in August of 2007. So, Suicide Squad has quite a mountain to climb.
But I’m pretty sure it’ll make more than both of those films in its opening weekend, and thus have the biggest opening weekend ever in August. Why? Well, almost nobody knew who the Guardians of the Galaxy were before the trailers came out. Now you might say that people don’t exactly know what the Suicide Squad is, and you would be right. But here’s the thing.
The trailers have been solid, Harley Quinn is one of the most popular characters to cosplay as, Suicide Squad has more ‘starpower’ than the cast of Guardians of the Galaxy had back in 2014, and, finally, the most popular comic book villain of all-time returns to the screen in this film: The Joker. Everyone knows the Joker. Everyone knows Will Smith. People won’t care about how good or bad Batman v Superman was.
- Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates – Fox – July 8th, 2016 – $16,628,170
- The Secret Life of Pets – Universal – July 8th, 2016 – $104,352,905
- Ghostbusters – Sony/Columbia – July 15th, 2016 – $46,018,755
- Star Trek Beyond – Paramount – July 22nd, 2016 – $59,253,211
- Jason Bourne – Universal – July 29th, 2016 – $59,215,365
Green means that it made more money than I predicted. Red means that it made less. Blue means that I got the prediction right.
July was a pretty good month for me, if you’re looking at my predictions. Star Trek Beyond and Ghostbusters were perfect predictions, and Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates only made like 1 or 2 million more than I predicted for its opening weekend. The Secret Life of Pets was way more anticipated by the public than I expected, and the opposite can be said for Jason Bourne. I’ve never been a Bourne-guy, so maybe that’s why I had trouble getting that prediction right. But really, I am shocked that a Bourne-sequel starring Matt Damon made less money than Star Trek Beyond did in their respective opening weekends.
- Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice – $872,662,631
- Captain America: Civil War – $1,151,488,407
- Deadpool – $782,579,736
- Ghostbusters – $159,587,152
- Independence Day: Resurgence – $372,835,461
- Star Trek Beyond – $165,959,414
- Warcraft – $433,025,655
- X-Men: Apocalypse – $534,547,826
The numbers above are based on Box Office Mojo, August 2nd 2016.
I’m worried about the future of the Star Trek and Ghostbuster-franchises, so they’ve both been added to the list. Those are the only new additions this month.
– Jeffrey Rex
I'm Jeffrey Rex 