Weekend predictions: Chainsaw Man set to continue Anime takeover of movie theaters

Another anime movie looks set to rock the box office this weekend, with our model predicting a comfortable win for Chainsaw Man—The Movie: Reze Arc. The dramas Regretting You and Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere are set to do battle with Black Phone 2 for second place.

This is another weekend with a lot of new releases, so I’ll let the model do most of the talking…

First up, Chainsaw Man looked fairly strong going into the weekend, based on our audience tracking and the very wide opening (3,003 theaters).

Preview numbers are excellent…

This isn’t another Demon Slayer, but that movie’s $71-million opening and $132-million domestic gross so far means a lot of newly-minted anime fans, who are clearly eager for more.

Our model has Regretting You coming in as the second-best opener this weekend.

The big caveat is that we don’t have preview numbers for this one, which adds a lot of uncertainty.

Springsteen was predicted to make more than Regretting You this weekend, based on the pedigree of the film and audience interest…

In this case, however, we do have preview numbers, and they aren’t great.

I would rate Springsteen’s chances of beating our model’s prediction as good. As I’ve noted a few times in the last month or two, the model sees a relatively modest preview number and (in my opinion) panics a little about what that means for the full opening weekend.

Given we don’t have hard data on Regretting You, it’s still possible that Springsteen will recover and post a better opening weekend. The story of The Smashing Machine just a few weeks ago is a cautionary one though, with a hyped biopic earning $850,000 in previews and just $5.8 million on opening weekend.

Finally, we have Neon’s horror movie, Shelby Oaks…

We do have preview numbers for this one, and they look decent…

The caveat with this one is that the preview numbers include earnings from earlier mystery screenings. That isn’t taken into account by the model, but again it’s being a little cautious in its full weekend prediction.

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

Overall, we could see a better weekend than last time, but the market remains soft. If Regretting You doesn’t pan out as hoped, and Springsteen fails to gain ground through the weekend, we could be looking at another sub-$70 million weekend.

Please help support The Numbers with a monthly or one-time donation, or by subscribing to The Numbers Business Report. We keep advertising to a minimum, and only for advertisers who we believe are directly of interest to our readers. If you’d like to advertise your movie or service with us, please email us at advertising(at)the-numbers.com.

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