The Marvels: Boxoffice Pro's Last Long-Range Forecast for the Movie

There is just one week left to go until the theatrical debut of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)'s latest--The Marvels--and Boxoffice Pro has put out the last "Long-Range Forecast" that will include the film (its projection next week to be found in its coverage of the weekend).

For the third week in a row Boxoffice Pro's projection reports erosion from its prior projection--from week to week slight (2 percent in the second projection, 9 percent in the third, 2 percent more this week), but it adds up, the more in as the initial numbers were underwhelming (indeed, along the lines not of what had been predicted for The Flash, but how that movie actually did).* Thus where the expectation in the October 12 report was of the movie having a $50-$75 million debut, on the way to a $121-$189 million total, as of yesterday Boxoffice Pro projected a mere $45-$62 million opening, and a final domestic gross in the $109-$156 million range.

If the pattern seen in the prior three weeks continues there might well be a little further erosion of the projection between now and next week--while as the precedent of The Flash shows, even an already much-reduced opening weekend projection might yet prove overoptimistic (Boxoffice Pro having still predicted $60-$80 million just before the movie pulled in a mere $55 million, with this proving more than half all it was going to get).

For my part I am still thinking of $250 million as representing the likely floor for the film's global gross--though the $500 million I had discussed as the upper end of the range back in October, if not necessarily out of the question, looks less and less plausible now.

* The initial projection for The Flash one month before release had the movie enjoying a $115-$140 million gross on opening weekend, on the way to a final domestic take of $280-$375 million. That number, received as underwhelming in the wake of the extreme hyping of the film, actually turned out to be wildly overoptimistic as The Flash's entire run amounted to $108 million in ticket sales, less than the low estimate of what it was supposed to make in just the opening weekend, and less than a third of what had been thought plausible for it.