Brand New Day goes for sixth and final #1 as 3 new releases all fight for single-digit openings

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday all landed between -45% and -46% against the same days a week earlier, the same footing that produced the -42% fifth weekend, and Thursday came in at -42% to leave it at $899,762,191. It is $237,809 short of $900 million, so the second film ever to reach that number gets there in the first hour of business today.

With Monday a holiday, expect strong Sunday holds across the board this weekend, which should give Brand New Day a drop slightly under 40%: call it $14 to $16 million. Add in the Monday holiday and we are looking at a total of about $920 million, meaning it will be less than $20 million away from passing The Force Awakens for the all-time domestic crown. Expect that record to fall in two weekends’ time.

Worldwide it is at $2.34 billion and third all-time behind Avatar and Endgame, as it passed Avatar: The Way of Water, Ne Zha 2 and Titanic last week. It has finally slowed down somewhat, so expect it to end up somewhere close to $2.5B when all is said and done.

The Odyssey re-took first place on Wednesday from Spider-Man: Brand New Day, a sign of just how strongly it is holding up and an indicator that Imax is still full seven weeks in. All week it dropped barely more than 20% against the week before: -26%, -25% and -20% from Monday to Wednesday, off a -27% seventh weekend. This weekend, with the Sunday holiday, expect around a 20% slide, maybe slightly better, to around $11 to $12 million, and it should once again be the shallowest decliner on the board.

It came into the weekend at a little over $570 million, so it should end up close to $585 million after Monday, putting it on pace for a finish comfortably above $600 million. So where does it land? It overtakes The Super Mario Bros. Movie this weekend for 18th all-time domestically, and then next on the list are Incredibles 2 ($608M), Star Wars: The Last Jedi ($620M) and The Avengers ($623M). We expect it to clear all three and ultimately land close to Barbie’s $636M.

Worldwide it stands at $1.56 billion, already Nolan’s biggest, Universal’s second biggest ever, and 14th of all time. Next on that list are the 2019 remake of The Lion King ($1.66B), Jurassic World ($1.67B) and Inside Out 2 ($1.7B), and we expect it to pass all three. It has already been said, but this is a phenomenal performance even against very high expectations. $1 billion would have been very strong, at Oppenheimer levels, so this is going to end up more than 70% over that high bar.

We said last week that anything above $15 million is a strong result, and it did exactly that, with great word of mouth on top. That is exactly what it needed for a strong Labor Day hold, hopefully staying basically flat or only slightly down once you add in the Monday holiday.

For the three days it may hit around $9 million, but if it can get up to double digits that is a great result here. At those numbers this one is already at $35 million by Monday, making $50 million a foregone conclusion and making Warner Bros. maybe rethink throwing it away for a tax write-off before selling it on to Ketchup Entertainment.

Hard to judge this one, but the buzz is low and Mark Wahlberg has not been a butts-in-seats movie star for a while now. Still, reviews are decent at 72% and a 56 Metascore, and it is the only new wide release this weekend from a major studio. The Dog Stars opened last weekend to $7.7 million; expect lower than that here unless walk-up buyers push it higher than expected. Call it $3 to $6 million and a quick run before it finds its audience on streaming.

Another hard one to judge, but we do not see this breaking out with the number of other options on the table and the limited buzz attached to it. A24 does have a more dedicated fanbase, so it could open at a similar level to By Any Means, or it could fail to find footing and barely get noticed. Reviews are fine but are not enough to pique attention, currently 62%, which is a little low for the movie fans who show up to specialty titles. If it can get to $5 million or above that is a decent start, though not necessarily what we expect here.

This is probably the last weekend Insidious makes any sort of significant money, but it should still grab another $5 million or so and get up above $50 million domestic and $120 million worldwide. This one has done all the work it needed to already off its cheap $18 million budget. A nice result for Sony, a studio that needs to pad out its slate with more of these mid-sized hits.

It opened Wednesday to $310,927, a $207 per-screen average. That is… really bad. Lionsgate will have to hope people did not realise it was opening midweek and pray the weekend can still get it to around $4 million. Remember, the original only opened to $2,512,145 on almost exactly the same footprint, 1,548 screens, so this is one of the more surprising sequels in recent memory. You have to assume it did well enough on streaming to justify it. Lionsgate has not disclosed a budget and The Numbers carries no production figure for it, but we are assuming it was cheap to make and will find more life once it hits streaming.