Weekend predictions: Despicable Me to continue animated streak at top of box office chart

Despicable Me 4 will continue the run of animated films at the top of the box office chart this weekend. It won’t match the opening of Inside Out 2, but it will still record a very healthy extended opening over the sort-of holiday weekend.

The “long” weekend presents challenges for our prediction model, but here’s what it thought of Despicable Me 4 going into the weekend:

The main question mark right now is exactly how strong the market is. Our model reckons it’s running around 67% of pre-pandemic levels, which is a reflection of the fact that, aside from Inside Out, most films have struggled recently. However, the fact that family films have been doing well gives some cause for hope.

Our model’s prediction based on its Wednesday, July 3 release date suggest it’s trending a little better than the model expected, but not by much…

It’s much too early to rule out a $100-million opening for Despicable Me 4, and the unusual timing of the weekend makes this a hard one to prediction. Right now, topping that magical milestone from Friday to Sunday would be a great result though.

Also in the hard-to-predict category comes Sound of Hope: The Story of Possum Trot, a kindred film to last Summer’s breakout hit Sound of Freedom. The model isn’t expecting the new film to rise to level of the previous one, with an opening more like $6 million looking most likely…

Its $3.6 million on opening day suggests it will land somewhere close to that $6 million.

The final new wide release this weekend is MaXXXine, the third film in Ti West and Mia Goth’s X series.

The best opening for a film in the series is $4.3 million, by the original X. (Note that the numbers above are adjusted to pre-pandemic equivalents by the model.) That’s a good target for MaXXXine, particularly given its better release date.

Here’s what the model thinks that top 10 will look like.

There’s little question Despicable Me 4 will top the chart with ease this weekend. How high it will land is very much up in the air at this point though.

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Bruce Nash, bruce.nash@the-numbers.com