Box Office Weekend Forecast: SNOW WHITE ($37M+), THE ALTO KNIGHTS and MAGAZINE DREAMS Anchor Another Sleepy Early Spring Frame

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

There’s not much more to say at the moment: the box office needs a lift as an entire industry and movie fans await the far more promising release slate in summer and beyond.

Can Snow White at least start to alleviate some of the late winter and early spring woes?

Snow White
Disney
Traditional Industry Tracking & Expectations: ~$45 – 50 million
BOT Domestic Weekend Forecast Range: $37.5 – 47 million
BOT Domestic Total Forecast Range: $94– 138 million ($118 million pinpoint)

Key Tracking Factors & Rationale:

• Narratives both internal and external of the film itself have been at the center of volatile tracking for Snow White over the course of the past year. We won’t rehash the overtly negative commentary in online comment sections except to emphasize that Disney’s target audience for this film (women, particularly grandmothers, mothers, and daughters) aren’t demographically represented in internet and blog discourse.
• That being said, general interest and sentiment toward the IP itself has always been a major consideration. Snow White is not as generationally familiar or popular among modern moviegoers as the likes of Disney’s most successful live-action remakes (The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, et al). As a brand with no consistent presence in pop culture outside of the original film’s iconic place in animation history, this is a film that more closely resembles the likes of 2019’s Dumbo (and 2015’s Cinderella, to an arguably lesser extent) as a recognizable but stand-apart piece of Disney iconography to millennials, Gen Z and Gen Alpha.
• At 47 percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, critics’ reviews won’t aid the decision of those on the fence about seeing Snow White in a theater. While consumer expectations of streaming availability are ever-present nowadays, it’s also worth keeping in mind that the only family-centric competition before late May’s Lilo & Stitch will be April 4’s Minecraft. That could bode well for staying power on Snow White‘s end if audience reception is more positive than that of critics.
• Elsewhere, The Alto Knights and Magazine Dreams will counter with hopes of attracting their core male audiences. Both are tracking to open near low-end expectations.
• Meanwhile, most holdovers should continue to display healthy declines without significant competition in the market.

Weekend Forecast
(table below is best viewed in desktop format)

This weekend’s top 10 films are tracking to earn 30 percent below the same weekend in 2024 ($98.4 million, led by the $45 million debut of Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire) and 51 percent below the same weekend in 2019 ($139.3 million, led by the $71.1 million opening of Jordan Peele’s Us).

All forecasts above are subject to revision prior to the start of the weekend and will be notated accordingly. Theater counts are estimated unless otherwise stated.

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