Weekend predictions: Solo Mio fighting with Send Help and Iron Lung for top spot

This will be a very slow weekend in movie theaters, but it will still be an interesting one for box office followers, with three movies essentially tied for top spot in our Friday-morning predictions. Solo Mio did well on Thursday evening, and could have relatively decent legs through the weekend, while Iron Lung and Send Help have been trading places all week, and will likely perform very similarly in their second weekends. The eventual winner this weekend will likely be the film that is least affected by the Super Bowl on Sunday.

Solo Mio wasn’t expected to do huge business this weekend, but gets a boost from the fact that Angel Studios got it into 3,052 theaters. That’s a high figure for them, and helped boost our model’s prediction to the point where (even with modest audience tracking) it could vie for top spot if it had good previews…

This morning, it got the preview numbers it needed…

Generally, films like this have a high previews-to-weekend multiplier, thanks to having an older audience than the norm. Even with the Super Bowl looming, an $8-million weekend seems on the cards.

The Strangers: Chapter 3 is the second-widest new release…

The model wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about this one going into the weekend, with a decline in the number of theaters booking the film compared to the previous two installments in the franchise, and modest audience tracking. The preview numbers don’t change the picture…

After factoring in the likely effect of the Super Bowl, $3 million looks like the target number for this movie.

Next up is The Moment, which A24 is expanding from four to 581 theaters. It earned a stellar $427,960 last weekend (over $100,000 per theater), and should be a good bet for the top 10.

The mockumentary, starring Charli XCX, might get lost a bit in the noise this weekend, and possibly will take a substantial hit from opening on Super Bowl weekend. Expansions like this are also hard to predict, but something over $2 million looks like a pretty good bet based on how it did last weekend.

The final movie for which we have a prediction based on Thursday preview numbers is Luc Besson’s Dracula, being released by Vertical Entertainment…

Dracula’s previews are enough to make a top 10 finish look quite likely, but it might not have much staying power through the weekend.

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

Solo Mio has the edge, according our model, but the reality is that this is a very close three-way race at the top. Iron Lung is predicted to end the weekend fractionally ahead of Send Help, but really the three films could come in any order. The determining factor will be which film is least affected by the Super Bowl. I think that gives Solo Mio a slight advantage, but there are a lot of factors at play.

If the big game is a blowout, we might see better business than expected across the board, but the Super Bowl generally takes a 15% bite out of theatrical grosses. That’s factored into the numbers above, but each movie will behave slightly differently—kids movies tend to lose out the least, for example.

Overall, we’re certain to have a slow weekend, with a total for all films in the $50 million to $60 million range. The real interest lies in which movie will pull off the win.

There are also some other wide releases worth watching out for. Stray Kids: The DominATE experience earned $900,000 from screenings on Wednesday, and the K-Pop concert movie could well land in the top ten. We don’t have an official prediction for it, but it is currently fourth on our most-anticipated movies list, which is a sign of considerable fan interest.

There are still two more movies opening wide this weekend that I haven’t covered. Viva Pictures is releasing Buffalo Kids, an animated film that will try to be a counter-programming option for kids this weekend. IFC has horror movie Whistle playing in 1,200 theaters. Neither is expected to hit the top 10, but numbers are sufficiently low across the board this weekend that I can’t rule out the possibility.

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