Weekend Box Office Predictions: Red Sparrow Makes Death Wish

You’re probably thinking, “Oookay, but what about that Black Panther?” We’ll get there, cut it out. In the meantime, we have two actioners facing off, with neither being likely contenders to make big bank.

Red Sparrow (Fox)

Jennifer Lawrence, Relatable Person™, reteams with her Hunger Games 2–4 director Francis Lawrence for this sultry action thriller, co-starring Joel Edgerton, Charlotte Rampling, and Jeremy Irons. The cast is good, the genre works, the budget is a reasonable $69 million, all well and good, no?

Movies like this live or die on critical reception, and Red Sparrow is doing lacklustre at best. Previous tracking had placed Sparrow around $25m, a healthy enough debut. That is, until Disney/Marvel’s Black Panther came along and kinda sorta ruled everything, perhaps not leaving enough oxygen in the marketplace for Sparrow to thrive. Jennifer Lawrence’s previous outing, Paramount’s mother!, flubbed with a $7.53m debut/$17.8m total last year, though that didn’t quite have the broad appeal of a movie like Red Sparrow. It’s likely that this movie will attract an older demographic, which has the benefit of better holds at the expense of a large debut.

Still, movies like Warner Bros.’ The Accountant and Universal’s The Girl on the Train managed $24.71m and $24.54m debuts, respectively, and those are decent comps for Red Sparrow. Account for the presence of Black Panther and a debut in the mid-teens is reasonable, lest general audiences trash it.

Prediction: $16 million, #2 rank

Death Wish (MGM)

https://youtu.be/HzILu6yyA20

The first Death Wish, out in 1974, earned $108m adjusted for inflation. The last Death Wish movie, released in 1994, earned $3.74m adjusted for inflation. So there’s our spectrum for this weekend’s remake helmed by Eli Roth and starring Bruce Willis (hint: it’s not going to do $108m).

If this were released at the time Liam Neeson’s Taken was a popular affair, this could do pretty well, what with its $30m production cost. As of now, Kevin Costner’s 3 Days to Kill ($12.24m debut/$30.7m total) and Jackie Chan’s The Foreigner ($13.11m debut/$34.39m total) serve as the most reasonable comparisons. Death Wish‘s trailer racked up a bit of buzz back when the movie was scheduled for November last year, prior to pushing to March, but that buzz has dissipated since. Plus, Bruce Willis hasn’t had a movie open above $10m in nearly five years. There aren’t any reviews for the thing either, never a comforting sign.

All told, Death Wish will probably (wait for it) get its wish granted.

Prediction: $10 million, #4 rank

HOLDOVERS

1. Black Panther (Disney) – $67 million (-40%), $504.5m cume
3. Game Night (Warner Bros.) – $10.2 million (-40%), $33.2m cume
5. Peter Rabbit (Sony) – $8.9 million (-30%), $82.8m cume
6. Annihilation (Paramount) – $5.5 million (-50%), $20.1m cume
7. Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (Sony) – $4.2 million (-25%), $392.9m cume
8. Fifty Shades Freed (Universal) – $3.2 million (-55%), $95.2m cume
9. The Greatest Showman (Fox) – $2.6 million (-25%), $164.6m cume
10. The 15:17 to Paris (Warner Bros.) – $2 million (-45%), $35.4m cume

Thanks for reading! How do you think Red Sparrow and Death Wish will do? Comment below and check back next week for final results.