Box Office Predictions – Quantumania easily wins first, while a Cocaine Bear or Jesus fight for second

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania should see a Marvel standard 60% drop in its second weekend while Cocaine Bear looks to over-perform.

This weekend sees two new releases aimed at vastly different audiences while the Marvel machine continues its box office domination with Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania easily expected to top for a second week in a row. The real question is whether the poor reviews for Ant Man hurt it in its first week, when most people aren’t fans. This film is currently the second worst-reviewed Marvel Cinematic Universe film, only one percentage point higher than Eternals. The film’s audience score is only 77%, while Eternals 10 is currently at 84%. The film’s opening weekend was only $95 million. It managed to make $106.1 million, making this the third-best February opening ever. I expect a drop of at least 60% and a second weekend of around $40 million, just like all recent MCU movies.

Our new release is one that I can’t wait to see (I have my ticket preordered for several weeks). Cocaine bear is presented to us with the tagline “Inspired by True Events” which simply stated that a drug smuggler dropped cocaine in the woods, and that a bear was found with a lot of cocaine in its system. Jimmy Warden, the writer and director of the film, took that basic premise and added a hilariously violent R-rated adventure through the woods. You should see the film to see one of the last screen performances by Ray Liotta, who tragically died last year. The film’s pre-release tracking isn’t expected to break any records. It’s pulling in similar prerelease numbers to Universal’s recent R rated films Knock At the Cabin and Violent night. Early reviews have started to pour in. The consensus is that this movie is everything that you would expect a movie titled Cocaine Bearto be. This bodes well for walk-up business. Good reviews and a really solid trailer will combine for this one to do better than expected business this weekend and I can see it hitting $15 million.

Third place comes the latest faith based film with the wide release of Jesus Revolution. We saw Kevin Sorbo’s faith-based film Left behind: The Rise of the Antichrist crack the top ten a few weeks ago. This week, we may see Kelsey Grammar crack the top five. Although faith-based films are not my cup of tea, you can’t deny that they have a huge audience. They always appear in the top ten when released. The film is from the same directors as the hit faith-based film I can Only Imagine , which was expected to open with $4m in 2018, but took in more than $17 million its first three days. Although I doubt this film will reach those heights, I can see it surpassing $10 million.

The rest of the box office will be filled with holdovers such as Titanic, which officially sunk Puss In Boots: The Last Wishcontinuing to dominate the charts while we wait for the next batch of tentpole films to hit theaters (luckily March is jam-packed with them!). Does anyone plan to go to the theaters this weekend. If so, let us know what you plan on seeing in the comments and don’t forget to check back in on Saturday when we give a brief update on the box office numbers.TOP FIVE PREDICTIONS:

Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania

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