Opening Weekend Forecast: £400,000-800,000
Theatrical Total Forecast: £1-2 Million
British cinema advertising company Pearl & Dean has released its predicted opening range for Mercy, out this weekend in the U.K. and Ireland from Sony Pictures Releasing. Directed by Timur Bekmambetov (Night Watch, Ben-Hur), the sci-fi thriller stars Chris Pratt as a detective who must convince an A.I. judge (Rebecca Ferguson) that he’s innocent of the murder of his wife.
January usually sees at least one action film released to moderate success, among them last year’s Flight Risk (£2.5 million), 2024’s The Beekeeper (£3.8 million), and 2023’s Plane (£3.7 million). The presence of Pratt and Ferguson in the cast could well help Mercy join that list, with a marketing campaign touting the involvement of Oppenheimer and The Dark Knight producer Charles Roven also potentially piquing some interest among potential moviegoers. Marketing for the film has also positioned it as an immersive event requiring IMAX and 3D viewing, which could in turn goose box office revenues thanks to premium ticketing surcharges.
However, reaction to the film’s trailers has been lukewarm at best, and critical reception has been roundly negative, with many labeling Mercy either a generic action thriller or a derivative of sci-fi predecessors like Minority Report. Furthermore, Pratt’s star power has diminished since its peak circa 2015, when the leading man—then fresh off the success of the first Guardians of the Galaxy film—starred in Jurassic World. Though he’s found success since then, most notably by voicing Mario in The Super Mario Bros. Movie, he hasn’t led a theatrically released, non-franchise film since 2016’s Passengers, instead focusing on streaming projects like Amazon series The Terminal List and Netflix’s The Electric State. The latter was a critical flop and widely reported to have massively disappointed in viewership numbers. In contrast, films like Plane and The Beekeeper thrived in no small part due to the cult action b-movie stardom of their respective leading men, Gerard Butler and Jason Statham.
Still, the only other genre focused film out at the movement is 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple, which has an 18-age rating. This means there is a sizeable audience being left out for the film which Mercy’s
12A rating could help it mop up.
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