May was not a very nice month to me. It was a mean mean month. No, seriously, what the fuck happened to the movies in May? I tried to take this seriously, and everyone just said “Fuck May” except for Guardians. Pretty much all my projections for May are going to be off, but by how much?
1) Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol 2
Original Prediction: 394M Total, 150M Opening Weekend
Actual Opening Weekend:146.5M
Total Box Office So Far: 342.7M
This one is pretty much as close to “on the money” as I’m probably going to get this summer It even looks like it might actually leg out around 394M. I just wish I had been more accurate with the other titles this summer. The bigger question is, will it stay on top for the summer, as I had predicted, or will something blow past it?
5) Pirates 5
Original Prediction: 235M Total, 90M Opening Weekend
Actual Opening Weekend: 62.9M
Total Box Office So Far: 85.3M
It’s a little early to say that Pirates absolutely will not hit 235M, but that would require almost a 4X multiplier, which I doubt this film has. A soft re-estimate would be 170-180M. So, it’s going to fall short… just like it did on my opening weekend projection. Even if I cheat the system a bit and say that when I projected the opening weekend, I took into account the 4 day gross, it still didn’t make 90M.
10) Baywatch
Original Predictions: 150M Total, 45M Opening Weekend
Actual Opening Weekend: 18.5M
Total Box Office So Far: 30.2M
I still don’t know what actually happened with Baywatch. I’m not really sure anyone does. The tracking failed everyone. For weeks we were told Baywatch was on track for a 40-50M opening. Dwayne Johnson hasn’t had a flop in a very long time. I guess he was overdue? I don’t think reviews could have killed this film. I wasn’t expecting great reviews to begin with. So why did Baywatch die so incredibly hard? If people were never really interested, why was the tracking so high? WHY DID THE TRACKING FAIL ME!? Needless to say, this film will come nowhere near 150M, nor did it hit the opening weekend projection.
11) Alien Covenant
Original Projection: 145M Total, 50M Opening Weekend
Actual Opening Weekend: 36.1M
Total Box Office So Far: 61.5M
I was off on Alien as well, but the thing that is now screwing me is that it isn’t following the traditional trends. It scored a B cinemascore, which isn’t great, but also shouldn’t have warranted the 70% drop it had in week two. That means it won’t even come close to 100M, when really it should be finishing pretty damn close based on its opening weekend. Still, it wouldn’t have been near my 145M projection, but now it’s likely to finish with just under 80M.
15) Snatched
Original Prediction- 115M Total, 30M Opening Weekend
Actual Opening Weekend: 19.5M
Total Box Office So Far: 41.5M
Another disappointment. I was thinking Amy Schumer had enough goodwill after Trainwreck to have a second hit, and that Mother’s Day and Goldie Hawn would help push her over the edge. Didn’t happen. A 50M final for Snatched is a far cry from my 115M projection.
17) King Arthur
Original Projection: 105M Total, 35M Opening Weekend
Actual Opening Weekend: 15.3M
Total Box Office So Far: 35.4M
Another major miss for me. I saw that the film was screening early at AMC theatres, and thought that meant the studio was super confident that they had strong material. It wasn’t very strong, and the film suffered. It’s not Tarzan, and I was thinking this would replicate that path.
16) Everything Everything
Original Prediction: 50M Total, 15M Opening Weekend
Actual Opening Weekend: 11.7M
Total Box Office So Far: 23.8M
At least I’m not too far off with this film. This teen drama will finish in the 30-35M range, which is only 15M off from my projection. The opening weekend also wasn’t that far off. I got it wrong, but not by too much.
I didn’t project Diary of A Wimpy Kid 4, however I did say that all wide releases I didn’t project wouldn’t make 40M. Wimpy Kid won’t make 40M, so I did correctly predict that film would flop.
Hopefully June will be nicer to me. It’s my birthday month, after all.
