Weekend Box Office Forecast for July 4-8, 2018

By Kim Hollis

July 4, 2018

No.

New at BOP:
Share & Save
Digg Button  
Print this column
It's the Fourth of July, so let's all celebrate with yet another Purge movie! Fortunately, Ant-Man and the Wasp will arrive on Friday and we can hopefully forget the horror series ever existed. Or maybe we could if it didn't feel all too topical in today's world.

Yes, Blumhouse goes back to the Purge well one more time. This time, we go back in time to see exactly what happened with The First Purge. The New Founding Fathers of America (ugh) decide to pilot a program that allows people to vent their aggressions on one single night. Rather than being a national event, this test program is limited to a single community. Naturally, it spreads across the country, because people are jerks. You know, like reality.

Anyway, this series still has an audience, though I don't know if they're quite so dedicated as they were for the original film *or* the sequels. The first film debuted with $34.1 million, the second earned $29.8 million on opening weekend, and the third one managed $31.5 million in its first frame. I think people might have a lot more discomfort with the premise these days, as sometimes it feels like we're living in a post-apocalyptic world , not just vicariously watching it in movies or reading about it. Over five days, I'm going to predict that it earns about $30 million. I hope the number is less, though.




Advertisement



We move on to happier subject matter with the light-hearted Ant-Man and the Wasp, the fourth Marvel movie this year (and third from the Disney branch). In 2015, the first film debuted with $57.2 million before going on to earn $180 million - not bad for a minor character, really.

For the 2018 version, Ant-Man and the Wasp ramps up the presence of the women, following the model of Black Panther, which is truly welcome. Both Evangeline Lilly and Michelle Pfeiffer factor in heavily here, and I think that does expand the audience some. Paul Rudd will do what Paul Rudd does, which is be funny and self-effacing. Peyton Reed directs, and reviews seem to indicate that he's combined the best elements of a couple of his previous films, Down With Love and Fantastic Four (NOT the terrible one from a couple of years ago, but the slightly less terrible one from 2005 - which had high points from Chris Evans.

I believe that Ant-Man's presence in the last couple of Avengers films does up his cachet, as does the fact that Marvel has been on a *very* hot streak throughout 2018. It's not all that unreasonable to imagine that Marvel will be able to claim four of the top seven or so films of the year. Let's give Ant-Man and the Wasp $80 million for Friday-to-Sunday, and it should enjoy a pretty good run in theaters, as well.


     


 
 

Need to contact us? E-mail a Box Office Prophet.
Thursday, March 28, 2024
© 2024 Box Office Prophets, a division of One Of Us, Inc.