Channing Tatum is looking at another opening at No. 1 in his canon of February theatrical releases with the Warner Bros Steven Soderbergh directed threequel Magic Mike’s Last Dance with industry estimates between $9M-$11M at 1,500 theaters. Warner Bros is not reporting numbers. Friday is around $4.3M which includes an estimated $1M previews that started at 5PM. The pic is squarely aimed at women over Super Bowl weekend, a time when box office falls on Sunday.
While this is the second title Warner Bros is pivoting from HBO Max to an exclusive theatrical release after New Line’s House Party, there’s a lot of intrigue in regards to how far this branded movie can go in its limited release of 1,500 locations. On the low-end, the pic’s weekend opening would be higher than the Jennifer Lopez-Owen Wilson theatrical-day-and-date Universal romantic comedy from a year ago, Marry Me ($7.9M). At the high end, the threequel isn’t that far from the 3-day (of a 5-day debut) of the previous installment, Magic Mike XXL. As we previously reported, rental terms were generous for exhibitors, at least 55% in their favor. Warners specifically curated theaters that it booked, avoiding playing two in the same zone, thus creating demand. While there’s an assumption that the movie, which cost in the high $40Ms, had a low P&A designed for a HBO Max movie, that’s not true with Warners giving the movie a solid theatrical push significantly north of $20M. Critics gave the threequel the worst reviews of the three pics at 47% on Rotten Tomatoes vs. part 2’s 65% and part one’s 78%. The current audience score on Rotten Tomatoes for Magic Mike’s Last Dance is 77%.
RelishMIx reports that Magic Mike’s Last Dance has a social media universe across TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter of 100.5M followers. “The Magic Mike franchise feeds are cross-promoted on Magic Mike Live, and are approaching sub-genre norms for this musical, comedy, drama genre…Added incremental notable views on TikTok are approaching 1B, adding ~8M views per day,” says the social media stat org. Tatum is promoting the movie to his 45.5M followers and Salma Hayek Pinault to her 26.5M followers. RelishMix observed that Tatum’s YouTube channel was used for the first time in ten years to post the trailer of the threequel.
“While the convo on Magic Mike runs positive for long time fans of the cultural life-style brand of the movies, the Vegas show and the reality series, chatter is mixed in with modern day threads about health, wellness, body fat percentage mentions and Channing Tatum’s future in the brand. As well, movie goers wonder if this is actually a last dance or a tease to the next gen-of Magic Mike,” adds RelishMix.
As the movie plays out over the weekend, we’ll provide a balanced assessment.
Paramount’s 25th anniversary re-release of James Cameron’s Titanic in 3D is looking at $2.85M today (including Friday previews) at 2,464 theaters, and a 3-day of $6.4M in third place. The Oscar-winning 1997 movie is expected at this time to rank under 20th Century Studios/Disney’s Avatar: The Way of Water at 3,065 theatres, which is seeing a ninth weekend of $6.5M (-42%) after a $1.6M Friday (-30%).
Fourth place goes to Paramount’s 80 for Brady which continues to sell discounted tickets. The pic ended its first week with $18.9M and is looking at a second Friday of $1.7M (-63%) at 3,939 theaters and second weekend of $5.6M (-56%) and running total by EOD Sunday of $24.5M.
Universal’s M. Night Shyamalan thriller Knock at the Cabin is seeing a second Friday of $1.5M (-72%) and second weekend of $4.6M (-67%) for a running total of $22.5M. At this time, that’s a steeper drop than the second weekend of Shyamalan’s Old (-59%, $6.8M second weekend). Knock at the Cabin ended its first week with $17.8M stateside.