5-Week Tracking & Forecasts: Will BEETLEJUICE BEETLEJUICE Scare Up One of the Best All-Time September Debuts to Kick Off Halloween Season?

This report also appears in Box Office Theory’s Substack newsletter.

With the final month of summer moviegoing season in full swing, our outlook reaches into the early fall season this week with preliminary forecasts for one of the most anticipated sequels of the remaining 2024 calendar.

Key updates on other releases are also noted below.

Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
September 6, 2024
Warner Bros. Pictures

Key Tracking Factors & Rationale:

• A combination of nostalgia and appeal to young audiences could prove potent for this legacy IP sequel. Michael Keaton, Winona Ryder, Catherine O’Hara, director Tim Burton, and composer Danny Elfman’s return from the original 1988 film provide a strong foundation, while Jenna Ortega’s presence and strong social media following could serve to amp up Gen Z and Gen Alpha interest.
• Not only has the original Beetlejuice evolved into an upper-tier cult-gone-mainstream classic over the last 26 years, Halloween season has become increasingly popular. Demand for “spooky season” movies has subsequently increased in recent years with the likes of the It films, The Conjuring franchise, and Goosebumps performing to various levels of box office success. As a family-friendly option, breakout potential is even more notable for this sequel.
• Early sentiment from strongly received trailers centers around an appreciation for this sequel’s honoring of “old school” visual effects involving stop-motion animation and physical set pieces.
• If word of mouth is strong, a long box office tail is likely in store through September, October, and early November with minimal competition until later during release and nearly two months’ run up to Halloween.
• On balance, as a legacy franchise that could share more in common with recent Ghostbusters films than It or Five Nights at Freddy’s, the marketing team will need to continue appealing to the younger generations over the next few weeks to maintain the kind of buzz momentum currently driving the film.
• To that note, Warner Bros. has a strong track record of bringing out audiences during this time of year. They currently own three of the top four September debuts via It ($123.4 million), It: Chapter Two ($91.1 million), and The Nun ($53.8 million). Disney and Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings ($75.4 million) sits between the latter two.
• Pre-sales begin on Monday, August 5, so we’ll be keeping a close eye on early trends from that metric and revise forecasts if needed.

Other Updates:

• Borderlands continues to lack the kind of momentum previously expected as competition with Deadpool & Wolverine will likely cut even further. Pre-sale pacing in our sample exhibition markets is roughly one-third the rate of Furiosa at the same point.
• Conversely, It Ends With Us is soaring well past our formerly conversative projections. Pre-sales among the core adult female audience are well ahead of Where the Crawdads Sing and Mean Girls, although front-loading is possible and few recent films are comparable to the adaptation given what is likely to lean more heavily on the age 30+ crowd than those films. Regardless, a breakout appears imminent.
• Alien: Romulus continues to trend upward toward the high end of potential with a ceiling that’s now expanding to potentially yield the best opening of the Alien franchise. Preview sales are trending ahead of A Quiet Place: Day One and Scream VI.

This report also appears in Box Office Theory’s Substack newsletter.