Weekend Forecast: ‘Ghostbusters’ & ‘The Infiltrator’

After months of speculation, plus huge and lengthy social media debates, the Ghostbusters rebooted franchise from Sony/Columbia will open this weekend and hope to prove the naysayers wrong. In addition, Broad Green Pictures will open The Infiltrator this Wednesday in hopes that the Bryan Cranston-led drama can build positive word of mouth and secure a profitable start.  Holdover The Secret Life Of Pets will challenge to repeat on top this weekend as its surprising $104 million opening weekend should see it have a hefty second weekend as well.

Ghostbusters

PROS:

• Social media has been swept up with a huge buzz storm over the past few months thanks to this film’s release. It’s true that the film has seen unprecedented levels of negative buzz on Twitter, but it’s hard to ignore its overall numbers which have only been topped by Deadpool and Star Wars: The Force Awakens in recent history. It has been particularly strong on Twitter where it has been in the weekly top five a total of 15 times in 2016 so far, second only to Suicide Squad on the year.
• Despite the largely negative sentiment on social media, the early reviews have been largely positive, currently possessing a 75+ fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
• Much of the poor buzz for the film has been labelled as misogynistic and unfairly portraying the film negatively, for no other reason than that the film features an all-female cast. The end result is that it has raised the film’s profile across the board but especially towards women who might otherwise not have been interested. In a sense the heaps of negative buzz could possibly create a perfect storm this weekend for its potential earnings.
• This film will mark director Paul Feig’s fourth summer movie with Melissa McCarthy in the last five years after Bridesmaids, The Heat and Spy — all of which were massive hits and went a long way towards building McCarthy into the star that she is. Their formula is proven, and by adding in a hugely popular franchise as a backdrop here it could easily become their biggest success to date.

CONS:

• The negative buzz surrounding the film might be too much for it to overcome and adversely affect both its opening chances and total gross.
• The star power of the main cast involved is largely limited to just Melissa McCarthy which could limit its draw to just fans of the original series, many of whom have voiced some of the biggest displeasure with the new direction of the reboot.

The Infiltrator

PROS:

• Talented cast and intriguing plot could play very well with mature audiences looking for a change of pace from the high octane summer offerings.
• While Twitter has been largely quiet, its Facebook page has done well in the recent past, and has secured an impressive 150,000+ likes to date. By comparison, Bryan Cranston’s last live action film Trumbo had less than 100,000 likes before release on its way to $7.8 million in total box office.

CONS:

• This will be Broad Green’s second wide release ever, which brings into question how strong and/or effective their marketing campaign will be. They are opening on a Wednesday to undoubtedly try to build word of mouth, but its lukewarm reviews so far seem to indicate that will be a long-shot, at best.

Top 10 Forecast

Box Office Pro forecasts this weekend’s top ten films will generate $166.7 million. That would mark a 7% drop from last year’s $178.7 million when Disney’s Ant-Man came up with a hefty $57.2 million on its opening frame to lead all films.

Check out our complete weekend forecast below.