Despite decent reviews and strong promotion, the major film releases for last week’s Friday the 13th weekend were indeed a horror show for Hollywood. Whether because of a weekend ice storm across the middle of the country or strong performances from hits such as HIDDEN FIGURES, SING, and a resurgent LA LA LAND, last week’s new releases failed to come close to industry expectations.
Taking various factors into account, researchers at Unanimous AI worked with a Swarm of movie enthusiasts to predict the success or failure of three new movies coming this weekend. Opening in theaters on January 20th are SPLIT, XXX: THE RETURN OF XANDER CAGE, and THE FOUNDER. After watching previews for these films and being briefed on industry box office projections, UNU did some forecasting.
UNU is on board with the box office projection for M. Night Shyamalan’s SPLIT. The prevailing feeling was that this psychological horror film looked exciting enough to overcome a lackluster cast that includes a chameleon-like performance from James McAvoy. If SPLIT can indeed hit the UNU prediction of a $23-25 million box office weekend, it will perhaps mark the start of a comeback for a falling director who was once featured on the cover of Newsweek as “The Next Spielberg.”
The second movie UNU considered was the third installment in Vin Diesel’s XXX franchise. Under the full title of XXX: THE RETURN OF XANDER CAGE, UNU was underwhelmed by the preview, which seemed emblematic of recycled action movie tropes. Although UNU expects XANDER CAGE to fall short of an $18 million weekend box office projection, it isn’t predicted to miss by much. The Swarm was quick to provide reasoning behind this assertion, too. While they found XANDER CAGE to be wholly unoriginal, they thought action movie fans would still be interested in seeing it on the big screen.
The final movie we asked UNU to predict was THE FOUNDER, starring Michael Keaton and Nick Offerman. The Swarm was utterly delighted by the film’s trailer, finding the story of the founding of a fast food icon to be a great hook for a movie. In fact, the response from UNU suggests that The Weinstein Company may be doing this film a disservice by slow-playing it to only a thousand screens this weekend with a modest projection of $3.5 million in revenues.
UNU’s full predictions and replays for SPLIT, XXX: THE RETURN OF XANDER CAGE and THE FOUNDER can be accessed by clicking the chart above. We’ll be back on Monday to grade the Swarm’s performance and return later next week with three new movie projections.
