Weekend Forecast: ‘The Conjuring 2’, ‘Now You See Me 2’ & ‘Warcraft’

For the second weekend in a row June will see three new wide releases, all with an eye (and potential) to break the box office out of its recent string of under-performances. Warner Bros. will offer up its horror sequel The Conjuring 2 in hopes of its bringing out the horror fans who have yet to coalesce around a horror in 2016. Lionsgate / Summit bring another sequel to the weekend with their magic action adventure Now You See Me 2 which hopes to pick up where the original left off. Lastly, the long-awaited film adaptation of Blizzard’s wildly popular video game Warcraft will see the light of day under Universal’s tutelage.  

The Conjuring 2

PROS:

• The first film in the franchise generated over $300 million worldwide on a reported budget of $20 million, making it one of the most profitable horrors ever made.
• The horror-loving demographic, specifically the supernatural sub-genre, has been largely under-served in 2016 so far with The Boy and The Forest being tops with just $11 and $13 million respectively on their opening weekend way back in January.
• At 78% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes it has done very well with critics which will only help its appeal.

CONS:

• Its Twitter numbers have been about 25% less than the original film despite having the exact same search string.
• Sequels in general have had a hard time of late with audiences apparently baulking at the lack of original new content at the box office, no matter how good the film is it could suffer from the current climate.

Now You See Me 2

PROS:

• The first film in the franchise surprised many when it turned a middling $29 million opening domestically into $352 million worldwide.
• With the exception of Isla Fisher (who was replaced with Lizzy Caplan), the entire cast is back with the most popular magician in the world also joining them for the sequel (Harry Potter aka Daniel Radcliffe).
• Social media has been very strong – The first film had just over 200,000 likes in total before release on Facebook with its sequel has generated over 200,000 likes in the last three weeks alone. Twitter has seen a ~25-50% bump as well over the past few weeks leading up to release.

CONS:

• Hunting season is open for sequels and the flop-cannon is taking aim. The market in general seems to be trending downwards domestically.
• Reviews are mixed once more for the film with it currently being 5% below the first film on Rotten Tomatoes.

Warcraft

PROS:

• At its peak the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) had 12 million active accounts each paying ~$15US per month for a whopping total of over $150 million each month in subscription revenue alone. Over its 12 year lifetime the game has had over 100 million accounts created worldwide, and holds the record for most popular MMORPG ever.
• The film has already generated $70 million worldwide before opening domestically.
• Director Duncan Jones is a director with a lot of credibility and a strong resume, his vow to remain as close to the source material as possible (as demonstrated by the various trailers too) should also play well with fanboys.
• Buzz has been strong on social media, especially Facebook with over 1.7 million likes for the film being a hefty offering for a net new page.

CONS:

• Reviews have been very poor, with many pointing to the video game-esque action scenes being simply too vast and confusing and a forced story trying to incorporate too many elements from the vast lore of the game.
• Video game adaptations have traditionally not done well at the box office (or been well-received by critics).
• Warcraft as a game is declining in popularity considering that at the end of 2015 there were ‘only’ 5.5 million active subscribers.
• With a new expansion arriving at the end of September (entitled Legion) for the game it perhaps would have been wiser to delay the movie, or brought forward the expansion, so that the two event collided to generate more interest amongst fans of the game who will be the real driving force behind its box office reception worldwide.

Top 10 Forecast

Boxoffice forecasts this weekend’s top ten films will generate around $135.4 million over the weekend. That would mark almost a 50% drop from last year’s $266 million when Jurassic World exploded onto the scene with a then-record $208.8 million opening.

Check out our complete weekend forecast below.