Weekend projections: third time’s the charm for Now You See Me franchise

Now You See: Now You Don’t will pull off an unusual trick this weekend. It’s is recording the worst opening weekend for the franchise, while simultaneously being the first Now You See Me film to come top at the box office. Back in May 2013, Fast and Furious 6, in its second weekend, topped Now You See Me’s $29.4-million opening. In June 2016, The Conjuring 2 debuted with $40.4 million, which, along with Warcraft’s (disappointing) $24.2 million, pushed Now You See Me 2 into third place with $22.4 million. This weekend, $21.3 million will be enough for Now You See Me 3 to claim the crown. Alas, that’s partly a story of the changing nature of the theatrical business over the past 12 years.

Here are the official studio projections for the three-day weekend (click the image for a full chart of all films reporting so far):

The good news at the top of the chart is that Now You See Me: Now You Don’t is coming in well ahead of our Friday-morning prediction, although a B+ CinemaScore and only 58% positive reviews means it probably isn’t getting great word of mouth. The Running Man is also landing a little higher than expected based on its Thursday previews, and this weekend’s third new wide release, Keeper is also beating expectations. Those results, plus some decent holds among the returning films, means the weekend as a whole will land slightly ahead of Friday’s prediction, and also a bit better than this weekend last year.

The biggest disappointment this weekend is the second-weekend drop for Predator: Badlands, which looked as though it might have a strong hold and is going to be down 68% from its debut. That’s not particularly unusual for a movie from a mature franchise, but it looked as though this entry could have broken the mold a little.

In the art-house/awards-hopeful scene, Nuremberg marginally takes the crown, with a decline of 37% from its opening, which is enough to overtake Sarah’s Oil (down 45% in its second weekend), and pull well clear of Bugonia (down 53% in its fourth weekend). Last weekend’s disappointing debut for Christy, meanwhile, has been followed by an unceremonious dumping from theaters, with the drama looking like it will earn around $100,000 in its second weekend, according to industry sources. Die, My Love will be down 63% and missing $1 million in its second weekend.

– Studio weekend projections

– All-time top-grossing movies in North America

– All-time top-grossing movies worldwide

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