Weekend Forecast: ‘Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children,’ ‘Deepwater Horizon’ & ‘Masterminds’

For the first time since 2011 September will have five Fridays and this upcoming weekend the box office will see three new wide releases to cap off the month and bring the total number of wide releases to 15. Fox will debut their young adult adaptation Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children in over 3,500 theaters with eyes on the top spot for the weekend. With a massive presence on Facebook (over 740,000 at present) it is one of the most talked-about new film properties on the year and appears to be a franchise waiting to happen. Lionsgate/Summit turns to Deepwater Horizon and Mark Wahlberg to turn around their lean 2016 which currently has The Divergent Series: Allegiant as its top film on the year with just $66 million. Lastly, Masterminds from the new-look Relativity will finally see the light of day after being delayed by more than a year with numerous release date changes due to the Studio’s bankruptcy.

Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children (Fox)

PROS:

  • The original children’s novels by Ransom Riggs made the New York Times bestseller list, with the first installment having sold more than two million copies and the second installment launching with a 250,000 print run.
  • Director Tim Burton is at the helm, having declined to direct this summer’s Alice Through the Looking Glass sequel to his hugely successful Alice in Wonderland to direct this film instead. Burton has a passionate fan base which will turn out to see any of his movies, and his distinctive “oddball” visual directorial style fits perfectly with the story.
  • Social media returns, especially on Facebook, have been very strong over the past few months. The most notable comparison is The Maze Runner which had 837,890 likes by its Tuesday before release, Miss Peregrine had 736,080.

CONS:

  • While the children’s books have certainly been successful, they are nowhere near on the level of a Harry Potter or Hunger Games or Divergent, which all earned blockbuster status at the box office (the most recent Divergent installment Allegiant the lone exception).
  • Reviews have been lukewarm so far, coming in with a middling 58% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes currently which is disappointing given Burton’s involvement and and prior success in the genre.

Deepwater Horizon (Lionsgate)

PROS:

  • The actual Deepwater Horizon oil rig explosion in April 2010 killed 11 workers, infamously took almost three months to plug, and has been measured as the largest oil spill and worst environmental disaster in U.S. history. The story captivated the nation at the time, providing a familiarity that may inspire audiences to see the film.
  • Of star Mark Wahlberg’s five most recent films, three reached $125 million or more at the box office: Daddy’s HomeTransformers: Age of Extinction, and Lone Survivor.
  • Rotten Tomatoes currently has given the film a glowing fresh rating of 88% so far from over 40 reviews. That makes it one of the best reviewed films in both Kurt Russell’s and Mark Wahlberg’s illustrious careers.

CONS:

  • Often films about tragedies and disasters can be a difficult subject that many steer clear from, especially when much of the potential audience remembers it vividly. Films such as United 93 about the September 11 attacks or Munich about the hostages at the Olympics hostages earned rave reviews but were not huge box office hits. In particular, this film might hit too close to home for audiences in the states around the Gulf of Mexico.
  • The film may have audiences chipped off by two other films released in the preceding weeks, both dramas about recent Americans facing life-or-death issues: Sully and Snowden.

Masterminds (Relativity Media)

PROS:

  • The cast of Kristen Wiig, Zach Galifianakis, Jason Sudeikis, and Owen Wilson is one of the top comedy teams you could ask for. Individually, they’ve appeared in a number of the highest-grossing live action comedies of the past few years, including Bridesmaids, Ghostbusters, The Hangover Part II, Due Date, We’re the Millers, and Horrible Bosses.

CONS:

  • The trailer has received a poor reception online, with many criticizing its seeming lack of originality and crude humor.
  • Social media buzz has been very light to date, with less than 100,000 likes on Facebook and with Twitter having trouble generating much chatter.
  • The film was originally scheduled for release in July 2015, but was pushed back more than once as distributor Relativity Media faced bankruptcy. The studio hasn’t had a film gross more than $40 million since Free Birds back in 2013, and this title seems unlikely to break that streak.

Top 10 Forecast

BoxOffice Pro forecasts this weekend’s top ten films will generate $106.1 million. That would mark a 24% decrease from last year’s $139.8 million when The Martian surprised just about everyone with a $54 million opening weekend,

Check out our complete weekend forecast below.

Title Distributor Weekend Domestic Total through
Sunday, October 2
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children Fox $30,000,000 $30,000,000
Deepwater Horizon Lionsgate/Summit $22,500,000 $22,500,000
The Magnificent Seven (2016) Sony / Columbia $17,300,000 $64,250,000
Storks Warner Bros. $12,790,000 $38,120,000
Sully Warner Bros. $8,800,000 $105,760,000
Masterminds Relativity $6,000,000 $6,000,000
Bridget Jones’s Baby Universal $2,560,000 $21,230,000
Don’t Breathe Sony / Screen Gems $2,260,000 $84,630,000
Snowden Open Road Films $2,030,000 $18,810,000
Suicide Squad Warner Bros. $1,870,000 $320,810,000

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