It has been a particularly fun month for us box office gurus as there have been lots of different narratives that have been interesting to follow such as Creed III’s dominance as a sports film, Scream VI chasing the highest-grossing in its franchise and Shazam! Fury of the Gods laughably failing at the box office on almost every metric. Where will John Wick: Chapter 4 fit within March box office narratives? Let’s see our box office forecast.
John Wick: Chapter 4
While last weekend, the Shazam sequel broke the March box office streak of franchise films opening at an all-time high for their respective franchises – it seems like John Wick: Chapter 4 will continue it again. From a box office perspective, there has been a keen discourse on just how high this franchise can continue to ascend and some had this film capping its ceiling in line with what John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum earnt. The near 3-hour runtime certainly brought in some scepticism alongside the heavy March competition in theatres.
Truth is (and people really need to get this through their heads!), the runtime literally does not matter for the potential box office of a film. If a movie is great, people will fill out the seats and continue to do so. If a film is awful, people will avoid the seats and won’t consider buying a ticket. The quality of the film is the significant factor to get people in or out of seats both from an opening weekend standpoint and the continuation of its run in theatres. Hell, half of the 2 Billion (!!) movies are over 3 hours in total. “Oh, but it can impact the number of showings on opening weekend so it does influence it” – Avengers: Endgame (181 minutes) has the highest opening weekend by $97Mand $16,000+ per theatre average for films that debuted over $100M+.
So, is the movie actually good? Critics are absolutely raving about the film as it currently has 93% on Rotten Tomatoes at this point in time, giving it the highest in the franchise. The John Wick franchise continues to build in popularity and given the fact that it keeps elevating the action, the stakes and the quality in each outing only give more of an incentive to see the film. The marketing has been particularly strong, perhaps the best we have seen for a Lionsgate film – the studio clearly has a lot of confidence in its way. In particular, John Wick fashion, look for John Wick: Chapter 4 absolutely cut all competition this weekend.
Shazam! Fury of the Gods
I just mentioned competition above but that doesn’t apply to Shazam! Fury of the Gods as it is clearly not a threat to any of the titles released in March and certainly won’t be moving forward in the month. Poor Word of Mouth/CinemaScore, a dying/irrelevant cinematic universe and bad critic reviews – look for this to absolutely plummet in the second weekend; albeit not as bad as Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.
Weekend Box Office Forecast:
| Film | Weekend Forecast |
| John Wick: Chapter 4 | $69,500,000 |
| Shazam! Fury of the Gods | $12,300,000 |
| Creed III | $9,050,000 |
| Scream VI | $8,600,000 |
| 65 | $2,800,000 |
| Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania | $2,500,000 |
| Cocaine Bear | $2,350,000 |
| Jesus Revolution | $2,300,000 |
| Champions | $2,050,000 |
| Avatar: The Way of Water | $1,750,000 |
Weekend Box Office Forecast for March 24-26, 2023
Subscribe to the MovieGainz Email Newsletter and never miss out on our box updates including forecasting, predictions and analysis.
