The Valentine’s and Presidents Day stretch delivered a mini-revival for box office receipts thanks to the breakout of Bob Marley: One Love. Now, one week before Dune: Part Two opens up the spring box office season, three releases aim for varying degrees of success on February’s final frame.
Following a strong $51.5 million six-day bow, Bob Marley: One Love should continue to attract moviegoers thanks to strong word of mouth. It boasts a 93 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of this writing.
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – To the Hashira Training
Sony & Crunchyroll
February 23, 2024 (WIDE)
Opening Weekend Range: $8M-$13M
WEEKEND PROS:
- The Demon Slayer franchise has been a sturdy performer for exhibitors during the post-pandemic era, consistently attracting the anime franchise’s fans with several theatrical event releases. With minimal competition once again—for screens in general and IMAX screens in particular—tracking and pre-sale trends for this chapter are trending slightly ahead of last year’s Demon Slayer: To the Swordsmith Village at the same point before release.
WEEKEND CONS:
- Even with a considerable IMAX footprint, Demon Slayer may be slightly hampered in its overall PLF footprint as Bob Marley will continue to play in those auditoriums.
Drive-Away Dolls
Focus Features
February 23, 2024 (WIDE)
Opening Weekend Range: $2M-$5M
WEEKEND PROS:
- Drive-Away Dolls will aim to court fans of writer-director Ethan Coen and a young female audience with a road trip comedic thriller that could play well in art house and prestige markets.
WEEKEND CONS:
- Drive-Away Dolls pre-sales are pacing behind Renfield and similar to Lisa Frankenstein, indicating limited potential for a mainstream breakout barring strong walk-up sales. The film also remains under review embargo as of Wednesday morning.
Ordinary Angels
Lionsgate
February 23, 2024 (WIDE)
Opening Weekend Range: $4M-$9M
WEEKEND PROS:
- Ordinary Angels looks to build on the successful reputation of the Kingdom Story Company, which has appealed to faith-based audiences with such films as Jesus Revolution. This dramatic-leaning adaptation is pacing closely to recent faith-based film such as After Death, His Only Son, and The Shift.
WEEKEND CONS:
- It remains to be seen if Ordinary Angels‘ marketing campaign has successfully reached beyond the core faith-based audience, which it will need to do in order to reach the box office heights of Jesus Revolution or pre-pandemic comp The Shack.
Current projection ranges call for a 39% decrease from the comparable weekend’s top ten aggregate of $88.6 million in 2023 and a 51% decrease from 2019’s $110.7 million during the same calendar frames.
| Film | Studio | 3-Day Weekend Forecast | Projected Domestic Total through Sunday, February 25 | 3-Day % Change from Last Wknd |
| Bob Marley: One Love | Paramount Pictures | $19,400,000 | $78,300,000 | -32% |
| Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – To the Hashira Training | Sony Pictures & Crunchyroll | $9,800,000 | $9,800,000 | NEW |
| Madame Web | Sony & Columbia Pictures | $6,300,000 | $35,500,000 | -59% |
| Ordinary Angels | Lionsgate & Kingdom Story Company | $5,500,000 | $5,500,000 | NEW |
| Migration | Universal Pictures & Illumination | $3,100,000 | $120,600,000 | -19% |
| Argylle | Universal Pictures | $3,000,000 | $41,700,000 | -38% |
| Wonka | Warner Bros. Pictures | $2,700,000 | $214,700,000 | -23% |
| Drive-Away Dolls | Focus Features | $2,300,000 | $2,300,000 | NEW |
| The Beekeeper | MGM | $2,000,000 | $63,100,000 | -38% |
| The Chosen: Season 4 Episodes 4 – 6 | Fathom Events | $1,600,000 | $7,400,000 | -56% |
All forecasts are subject to revision/finalization before the first confirmation of opening previews or Friday estimates from studios or official sources.
Theater counts are either studio estimates OR unofficial projections if preceded by “~”.
The above table does not necessarily represent exact ranking as some studios do not finalize weekend location counts and/or an intent to report box office returns prior to publishing.
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