Long Range Forecast — August 8, 2025
Sketch | Angel Studios
Domestic Opening Weekend Range: $4M – $8M
Angel Studios steps outside its comfort zone with this festival pickup, which could appeal to a wider audience than the more adult-oriented content—such as historical dramas Cabrini ($7.1M domestic opening) or Bonhoeffer ($5M) or post-apocalyptic genre films Homestead ($6M) or The Shift ($4.3M)—they’ve released up to now. Sketch is the second family fantasy-adventure about drawings come to life to hit the North American market in two years—the other, last year’s Harold and the Purple Crayon ($6M), also opening the first weekend of August. A Sony/Columbia release, Harold had more marketing muscle behind it in addition to a larger number of recognizable names in the cast, but with Angel’s established fanbase and record of successful grassroots marketing, Sketch could very well end up opening higher than its bigger-budget cousin.
Freakier Friday | Disney
Domestic Opening Weekend Range: $40M – $50M
Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan re-team in this follow-up to 2003’s Freaky Friday, which should appeal to the nostalgia of the original’s fandom. Our forecasting panel has Freakier Friday opening far higher than its predecessor, which debuted to $22.2M in the first weekend of August 2023 before topping out at $110.2M. In more recent years, Disney has slotted several other live-action updates of established properties in the late July/early August, namely 2023’s Haunted Mansion ($24M domestic opening), 2021’s Jungle Cruise ($35M), and 2018’s Christopher Robin ($24.5M). None of those three are based on big-screen source material (though there was a Winnie the Pooh movie in 2011), whereas Freaky/Freakier Friday is a more familiar entity for moviegoers and thus (potentially) an easier sell. Curiosity as to the return of Lohan to the big screen could also generate ticket sales; the early ’00s pop culture icon has been largely absent from the movies in recent years, appearing in a pair of Netflix rom-coms and cameo-ing in last year’s Mean Girls ($28.6M), like Freakier Friday a reboot of one of her earlier films.
Weapons | Warner Bros.
Domestic Opening Weekend Range: $20M – $30M
Barbarian director Zach Cregger teams with Josh Brolin and Julia Garner for this horror film with thriller and true-crime elements. The last several years have seen a number of horror films based on original IP find theatrical success, among them Barbarian ($10.5M domestic opening), Smile ($22.6M), M3GAN ($30.4M), Talk to Me ($10.4M), and—like Weapons, about a menacing force targeting children—The Black Phone ($23.6M) and Longlegs ($22.4M).
Tracking Updates [as of July 25]
| Release Date | Title | Predicted Opening Range | Distributor |
| 7/25 | The Fantastic Four: First Steps | $115M – $135M | Disney |
| 8/1 | The Naked Gun | $20M – $35M | Paramount |
| 8/1 | The Bad Guys 2 | $22M – $30M | Universal |
| 8/1 | Together | $6M – $10M | NEON |
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