Friday Box Office Analysis
By Kim Hollis
January 6, 2018
BoxOfficeProphets.com

There's a light over at the Frankenstein place
With the arrival of January, we have the end of Star Wars: The Last Jedi's reign as our #1 film. That's probably a week or so earlier than expected, but even so, it closes out 2017 as easily the biggest domestic earner (and it's not far off from worldwide, either). Will 2018 be a better year for movies than 2017 was? I'm guessing probably not, but at least our only new wide release is starting off strongly enough.

Insidious: The Last Key, the fourth installment in the horror franchise from Blumhouse Productions, took in a mighty fine $12.7 million yesterday. That's a couple million better than the first Friday for Insidious Chapter 3, though Insidious Chapter 2 is in no danger of seeing its $40.3 million debut weekend eclipsed. Still, given the notion that this horror series might have played itself out already, almost $13 million in the first weekend of January is great. Since the budget is $10 million (higher than usual for one of these films), it's of course going to be a money maker for Universal and Blumhouse, which is pretty typical behavior when they release horror flicks these days.

As far as the weekend goes, these films almost always have terrible multipliers. (There are exceptions and they usually come from the Conjuring family of films.) Let's call the weekend total for Insidious 4 $26.8 million, and even if it falls off sharply next weekend, everyone involved will be pretty happy with the financials on this one. Is it enough to bring us an Insidious 5? Probably not, but never say never.

Second place for Friday goes to the holiday juggernaut known as Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle. The combined power of The Rock and Kevin Hart is strong. It earned yet another $10.8 million yesterday, down 39% from the previous Friday, which was of course bolstered by the timing of the 12 days of Christmas box office bonanza. LOTS of people were off then, whereas most were back to work (and maybe school) yesterday. It should come in with a three-day total of $32.5 million, meaning it's going to be the box office champion for at least a weekend. It'll now be working its way toward $250 million domestic. Since Sony hasn't had a lot to cheer about lately (other than Spider-Man), this release is a huge feather in their cap.

That leaves Star Wars: The Last Jedi down in third place, as most everyone who wanted to see the film has had the opportunity to do so by this point. With $6.6 million yesterday, it was down a rough 65% from last Friday. It has really seen some steep declines over the last several days, in fact, allowing Jumanji to get ahead on weekdays, too. It'll be a close race between this one and Insidious 4, but I think Star Wars will come in a little behind in third place as it will have a weekend total of $23.6 million.

Finally, Molly's Game, the Aaron Sorkin-directed film starring Jessica Chastain, expanded from 271 to 1,608 venues and had a Friday total of $2.3 million. It's a good-looking film with some awards buzz, particularly for Chastain, so a weekend total of around $7 million is probably in the cards (ha ha) here. I'm sure it will be a big favorite around the BOP offices.