“The Fate of the Furious” to Top Box Office as “The Promise” Predicts a Devastating Opening

	The Fate of the Furious	$39.7 million
	The Boss Baby	$9 million
	Beauty and the Beast	$8.6 million
	Unforgettable	$7 million
	Born in China	$5.5 million

Thanks to the tepid numbers opening films are going to bring in this weekend, the top three spots at the box office will go to holdovers The Fate of the Furious, The Boss Baby, and Beauty and the Beast. Numbers for Fate are spread out for its second weekend in theaters — some predictions have it making north of $45 million, while others place it more around the $35 million mark. Realistically, it likely won’t reach that $45 million mark if the past Fast and Furious movies are anything to go by. Nearly every movie in the franchise before this one has dropped over 60 percent from the first to the second weekend, or at least close to it. By those standards, it will land somewhere in the high 30s and possibly surpass $40 million. As it stands, the film is currently at $685 million worldwide and looking to become the second film of 2017 to reach $1 billion. Given the worldwide records it broke in its opening weekend, there’s no reason to think it won’t make $1 billion. Currently, it’s $100 million away from becoming the second-highest film in the franchise globally and $900 million away from surpassing Furious 7, though that seems less likely. Domestically, it’s the seventh-highest film in the franchise but with plenty of time left, it should make it into the top five.

As for the other two mainstays, they’ll continue their strong performances of always dropping less than 50 percent. There’s a slight chance newcomer Unforgettable could usurp one of the two, likely Beauty and the Beast, but as it stands now, that won’t happen. Instead, Boss Baby and Beauty will over around the $8-9 million mark as the former approaches $130 million domestically and is now just over $300 million worldwide, while the latter is now only $7 million from surpassing Rogue One to become the 20th-highest film of all time worldwide.

	Opening Weekend	Current Gross	Facebook Likes	Tweets
The Fate of the Furious	$98.7m	$120.3m	420,987	330,520
The Boss Baby	$50.1m	$122.8m	70,862	21,638
Beauty and the Beast	$174.7m	$459.8m	17,988	78,804
Unforgettable	N/A	N/A	131,723	2,550
Born in China	N/A	N/A	924,598	9,534

The two new films set to make it into the top five is the female-centric thriller Unforgettable, starring Katherine Heigl and Rosario Dawson from debut director Denise Di Novi, who has been a long-time producer before this. Made for a moderate $12 million, a $7-8 million opening is more than decent and should be able to turn a profit for Warner Bros. after a handful of weeks. There’s certainly an audience for this film, similar to last year’s When the Bough Breaks and 2015’s The Boy Next Door. However, both those films opened to double than what Unforgettable is predicted to make, so there certainly is the chance for surprise here.

Warner Bros. Pictures

Finally, Disneynature’s latest film, opening, as per usual the weekend of Earth Day, Born in China, is looking to open at $5 million or a little more. This puts it in the realm of other films in the same group such as Monkey Kingdom at $4.6 million and Bears at $4.8 million. Coincidentally, this weekend there will be marches across the country in the name of science. It’s unlikely this activism will inspire any more people to go see this film than predicted, but it’s worthy of note.

	Rotten Tomatoes		IMDb	Metacritic
	Critics	Users	Stars
The Fate of the Furious	67	81	7.3	56
The Boss Baby	53	60	6.5	50
Beauty and the Beast	71	85	7.7	65
Unforgettable	29	N/A	5.3	46
Born in China	78	N/A	7.5	61

The more interesting story of the weekend, however, will be The Promise, a new, large-scale period drama starring Oscar Isaac and Christian Bale. The film was made for an astonishing $100 million budget and is primed to make less than $4 million in its opening weekend, which is nothing short of a disaster for the movie. From Terry George, the director of Hotel Rwanda, a star-studded cast and the epic setting of the Armenian genocide, this movie should be primed to make far more, especially with the all-encompassing marketing campaign it’s pushed in the last several weeks. However, even with all those aspect, it’s still not poised to do well. It also doesn’t help that reviews and word of mouth for the film are relatively poor going into its opening.

Open Road Films

Eric Esrailian, producer of Survival Pictures which developed The Promise, told The Hollywood Reporter that the film’s weak performance will be due to Turkey’s influence on the film and that “one of the most insidious realities of our existence in the United States is that foreign governments can control art.” However, something that might make want audiences to go see the film is that part of its proceeds will help go to a $20 million fund the film is gifting to UCLA’s School of Law’s new The Promise Institute for Human Rights.

Other newcomer films like the shoot-em-up comedy flick Free Fire and mysterious Phoenix Forgotten are poised to film somewhere around the $3 million mark or slightly below.

(Sources: boxoffice.com, boxofficemojo.com, rottentomatoes.com, imdb.com, metacritic.com. Tweets and Likes represent figures for this week only. Figures represent numbers at time of writing, and may have changed. Tracking Board does not report Rotten Tomatoes user ratings for movies that have not yet seen wide release.)

Anya Crittenton | Associate Editor