Box Office Preview and Predictions: ‘Abominable’ looking at soft #1 as ‘Judy’ hopes to go over the rainbow in limited opening

After a few exciting weekends at the box office of breakouts and bombs and everything in between, September is looking to end on a relatively quiet note, with only one new opener in wide release. However, there is another new film in opening in what is technically “limited” release whose performance this weekend could be crucial to one of the biggest Oscar races this season.

The one new wide opener this weekend will be Universal’s Abominable, the latest film from DreamWorks Animation, and the second one distributed by Universal after this February’s How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World. Dreamsworks has had a solid track record over the years, with all but four its last 18 releases opening to over $30 million, and all but three making over $100 million total. However, buzz on Abominable has been incredibly muted, with recent numbers from Variety putting the movie on track for a sub-$20 million opening, which would be the lowest opening for DreamWorks since the 2006 Aardman co-production Flushed Away.

It probably does not help that exactly one year ago this weekend, another snowy CGI animated film about a mythical creature opened, Warner Animation Group’s Smallfoot. When you include Laika’s Missing Link from earlier this year, that makes Abominable the third Cryptozoology-themed animated film to be released in the last year. That said, reviews for the movie are respectable (82% on Rotten Toamtoes, 57 on Metacritic) and it is the first wide release aimed at families since The Angry Birds Movie 2 from six weeks ago. Those two factors should be enough in the end to get the movie above $20 million and into the top spot, for a $21 million weekend.

But perhaps the more exciting new opener this weekend, despite being on track for a much smaller opening, is Roadside Attractions’ Judy. After successful launches at the Telluride and Toronto Film Festivals a few weeks ago, Roadside will open the movie in 457 theaters on Friday. This type of quasi-wide release is usually only done by studios when they have no idea what to do with a movie, but Roadside has been doing this style of release throughout the decade, to varying degrees of success. In the last 10 years they have opened 11 movies in 300-400 theaters, with openings as low as $240,589 (2012’s Branded) and as high as $2.7 million (2014’s A Most Wanted Man). Judy will be opening in a less popular range, in the 400-500 theater zone, where Roadside has opened only three movies before.

Among those three movies, there are two that are comparable to Judy: the Whitney Houston documentary Whitney, which opened to $1.3 million in 451 theaters in 2018; and the Brian Wilson biopic Love & Mercy, which opened to $2.2 million in 481 theaters. With the amount of hype that has built up around Renée Zellweger’s performance and solid reviews for the film overall (86% on Rotten Tomatoes, 66 on Metacritic), Judy should be able to match Love & Mercy‘s opening, with a $2.2 million opening weekend. That will be more than enough to crack the top 10 for the weekend, and should be enough to convince Roadside to push the movie into a proper wide release.

Holdovers: After an excellent over-performance last weekend, Downton Abbey is likely to see a heavy drop-off as the initial fan rush dies off, with a 55% drop for a $14 million weekend, enough for the #2 slot. The rest of the top 5 will probably end up being a game of musical chairs between four adult-aimed holdovers, all of which were within $2.2 million of each other this past weekend. It should come down to which ones have the best word-of-mouth and which ones are burning off their audience more quickly.

1. Abominable – $21 million (NEW)
2. Downton Abbey – $14 million (-55%)
3. Hustlers – $10.4 million (-38%)
4. Ad Astra – $9.5 million (-50%)
5. IT: Chapter Two – $9 million (-47%)
6. Rambo: Last Blood – $8.3 million (-56%)
7. Judy – $2 million (NEW)
8. Good Boys – $1.7 million (-34%)
9. The Lion King – $1.5 million (-43%)
10. Angel Has Fallen – $1.5 million (-38%)