The Boxoffice Podium
Forecasting the Top 3 Movies at the Domestic Box Office | May 16 – 18, 2025
Week 20 | May 16 – 18, 2025
1. Final Destination Bloodlines
New Line Cinema | NEW
Weekend Range: $48M – $60M
Showtime Marketshare: 22%
Pros
- We’ve received a wide range of landing spots for the domestic opening weekend of Final Destination Bloodlines, the sixth movie in the death-happy horror franchise. Exhibitors and film bookers in our forecasting panel submitted numbers as low as $45M and as high as $70M, a discrepancy that suggests the film could over-index and underperform on a regional basis. We’ve settled on a range of $48 to $60M for the title, reflecting recent national trends for established horror IPs.
Whatever the result, Warner Bros. should have another checkmark in the Win column. The company would welcome the latest installment in the series with a franchise-record opening weekend, currently held by 2009’s The Final Destination with $27.4M. If the film overperforms—a factor we must consider based on sky-high awareness metrics (over 50M trailer views on YouTube alone)—the film could outgross the lifetime domestic totals of every individual film in the franchise over its opening weekend. It would be a remarkable feat, and one within reach considering the highest domestic earner of the bunch, 2009’s The Final Destination, finished its run at $66.47M in North America. The star power driving the marketing campaign will be the elaborate Rube Goldberg-style set pieces killing off the film’s ensemble one by one. Critics have already expressed their approval of the revival of this high-concept horror darling with a 93% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Cons
- Final Destination has been a very profitable franchise for New Line, taking in $263.36M domestically and $657.7M globally across five films. It’s not a $2.38 billion mega-earner like the studio’s 9-film Conjuring series, perhaps partly because there’s no signature heavy ala Annabelle or Freddy Kruger. The closest Final Destination comes to that is the more passive figure of William Bludworth played by the late Tony Todd, who makes his exit in Bloodlines. The most recent entry, 2011’s Final Destination 5, was the weakest link in the chain domestically with $42.58M, which may explain why this title has been on ice for so long. And yet, absence makes the heart grow fonder…
2. Thunderbolts* (aka The New Avengers)
Marvel Studios | Week 3
Weekend Range: $14M – $18M
Showtime Marketshare: 15%
Pros
- With $130.39M banked so far, Marvel Studios’ Thunderbolts* should pass the $134.8M domestic total of The Incredible Hulk soon, which its $273.95M global already did. Once again, the Monday actual ($32.39M) for Frame 2 nipped away at the Sunday estimate of $33.1M, which was already on the low end of expectations. Rebranding the film as The New Avengers seems to have had little effect, positive or negative, as it did when WB unofficially rebranded Birds of Prey as Harley Quinn: Birds of Prey back in 2020. The good news is Thunderbolts* still has one more weekend with no major four-quadrant tentpoles to do some solid business before new openers on Memorial Day sink the title into bottom half of the top ten.
Cons
- Whichever end of our forecast spectrum Thunderbolts* lands on, the comparisons will likely be off in terms of the MCU movies we’re measuring it against. On the lower end will be on par with the third frame of Captain America: Brave New World ($14.85M), a title it should be lapping based on audience reaction alone. On the higher end, it will still fall below Shang-Chi’s Frame 3 ($21.67M). Right in the middle, and we’re the third weekend of Ant-Man and the Wasp ($16.5M), nobody’s favorite or least favorite Marvel movie.
3. Sinners
Warner Bros. | Week 5
Weekend Range: $10M – $14M
Showtime Marketshare: 12%
Pros
- It’s only a matter of days before the global gross of Sinners (currently $288.7M) passes that $300M mark. The movie is also making a small-scale return to IMAX 70mm at 9 locations due to popular demand. When it passed the $200M domestic milestone last week (currently $220.68M), it became the first original movie to do so since 2017’s Coco, and the first original live-action flick since 2013’s Gravity. It will be interesting to see if this spurs risk-averse studios to roll the dice on more fresh/non-IP projects in the coming years.
Cons
- Final Destination is drawing a bloodline in the sand with Sinners this weekend as R-rated horror rules the roost. That new film will be the signature destination for the 20’s/30’s quadrants while also capitalizing on older Millennials and Gen Xers who remember the 25-year-old franchise fondly. We call that strong competition for Sinners that will be hard to fight off, even though Ryan Coogler’s vampire hit only posted a -33% drop last frame. Still, our projected $10M – $14M fifth weekend is nothing to sneeze at, especially considering this year had movies like Mufasa: The Lion King ($12M) and Flight Risk ($11.58M) that topped the box office in that same range during Q1.
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