BOX OFFICE PREVIEW – SEPTEMBER 16 2016

This Week’s Top Pick

 Blair Witch

While we here at Cavalcade liked Adam Wingard’s take on the legend of the Blair Witch (find our full review and verdict here), it seems a majority of critics didn’t enjoy the return trip to the Black Hills forest quite so much since the film is currently scoring a rotten 43% on Rotten Tomatoes. Before this week, Lionsgate would have considered a $20 million opening a virtual guarantee for the found footage flick but the current backlash is putting that figure at a considerable risk.

Blair Witch will be hoping to generate serious nostalgia pangs from Gen-X’ers to get it somewhere near the top of the box office over the weekend but there are plenty of people who just haven’t taken to its predecessor The Blair Witch Project over the years and this update really needed a warmer reception to convince horror audiences en masse to go down to the woods today.

It’s actually very difficult to call Blair Witch‘s fate right now; it’s been a very strong year for the horror genre at the box office but it’s also in danger of becoming over-saturated just as horror movies are entering their peak season. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see Blair Witch sitting in the number spot come Monday but it will have to go against the tide to get there and it’s not short on competition either.

Box Office Predictions

That competition comes in the form of another long-gestating sequel Bridget Jones’ Baby that’ll form one-third of this week’s Mexican stand-off for top spot alongside last week’s massively successful Sully. It’d probably be wisest to bet on Clint Eastwood’s acclaimed re-telling of the “Miracle on the Hudson” since Sully has performed stupendously during the week and will likely only take a 35% or so drop-off in ticket sales this weekend after its $35 million opening. Again, it’ll be almost too close to call between the this week’s three big hitters as they all offer something entirely different to the other and are all expecting to gain around $20 million in revenue, so we’ll just have to see what audiences are in the mood for this weekend.

Today’s other new release is Oliver Stone’s Snowden starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the real-life whistleblower. This film has jumped around on the release schedule -it was supposed to have first seen theaters nearly a year ago- and its middling reviews (58% on RT) go some way to explaining why distributor Open Road haven’t exactly been confident in it. Predictions for Snowden are for it to hit somewhere around the $10 million mark but that is very optimistic and it will do well to make up even the majority of that figure and finish in fourth come Monday.

We can also expect to see Don’t Breathe finally slip out of the top 5 as horror fans turn their attention to the woods in Burkittsville, so it’s very likely that last week’s thriller When the Bough Breaks will round off the top 5 by putting a further $5 million in the bank.