Box Office Predictions: Weekend of November 16-18

First things first: this is going be an enormous weekend at the box office. 

Reason #1: The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2. The final installment of the franchise based on the bestselling novels had high expectations, to say the least. How high? If it doesn’t have one of the Top Ten biggest debuts of all time, that would be considered a disappointment. 

For some context, two of the last three Twilight installments currently sit at #7 and #8 of all-time opening weekends. Seventh is 2009’s New Moon, which made $142.8 million and eighth is Breaking Dawn Part I, which took in $138.1 million in the same weekend last year. 2010’s Eclipse, which came in between those two, opened on a Wednesday over the July 4th weekend and took in $176 million over that time frame.

Recent history tells us that the last opening has a great chance of being the biggest yet. In 2010, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part I made $125 million in 2010. Its follow-up (which was the final Potter) made $169 million and currently sits at #2 of all-time openings.

With this being the last time audiences get to watch Edward, Bella, and Jacob – fans are bound to rush out right away and see it. However, I have a hard time seeing it grossing the amount of money that the last Potter made over its predecessor. I suspect Breaking Dawn, Part 2 will take in only slightly more than New Moon did three years ago, but still have the designation of biggest Twilight opening. 

This weekend’s two slot will undoubtedly be Skyfall, which broke the all-time Bond opening last weekend by a lot, earning $88.3 million. As I mentioned in a previous post, Skyfall is already considered one of the greatest 007 films ever and its second weekend drop-off will probably not be as steep as 2008’s Quantum of Solace, which dropped 60% in its 2nd weekend. A 50% drop seems more likely.

Then we get to Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln, whose box office prospects I wrote about extensively earlier this week. In that blog post, I wrote that I expected the film to gross anywhere between $18-$38 million. I also mentioned that it was opening on only 1500 screens, which is a low number for an opening weekend. After writing my blog, I researched that screen number a little more closely and I am now very confident in stating that $38 million is out of the questions. For that matter, $28 million seems highly unlikely too. With the massive competition it’s facing, I expect Lincoln to debut on the lower spectrum of what I said earlier… and maybe less. It could open at #3, but it’s more likely to be number four, behind the third weekend of Wreck-It-Ralph.

With all that context, here are my official predictions for the box office this weekend. I’ll report back Sunday and tell you how smart or dumb I am:

1. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 2

Predicted Gross: $153.8 million

2. Skyfall

Predicted Gross: $43.4 million (representing a drop of 51%)

3. Wreck-It-Ralph

Predicted Gross: $21.2 million (representing a drop of 36%)

4. Lincoln

Predicted Gross: $18.1 million

Yes, that’s about as low as you can get on the scale I gave you earlier this week about Lincoln, but that will still be considered a rock solid opening on 1500 screens and I suspect it will continue to play well week to week, just like Argo is currently doing.