Blue Beetle- 24
Strays- 21

I've been down on Blue Beetle this whole time .. but maybe it can pull out an opening where we are all like "that ain't bad." Like $25M?

Strays feels like a late august comedy that opens to $20M and legs it out to like $75-80M. Or at least it would have in 2018. Now I have no idea what this type of movie is capable of.

So Barbie will remain at #1.

Not really feeling a big opening for Strays here but hopefully it's good and it ends up a long term success story

Barbie will be #1, which means Blue Beetle will be.

Early reactions to Blue Beetle look "good" but to me it feels written by Generative AI. That said Latino crowd is among the most walk heavy groups. If they come in next week, it could "over perform" relative to disastrous expectations. My range is 20-35m. 20m if RT score is terrible and latino crowd ignores it completely. 35m with good(its not getting rave for sure) reviews and latino crowd does come in. I will update around Tuesday where things are. Transformers early this summer did blow up in its final week.

I can't believe I'm saying this but I'm feeling a Blue Beetle breakout at this stage. Lighter second half of August, decent reviews, Latino appeal, and also think the understated Cobra Kai star Xolo Maridueña helps. Could see it breaking $30M.

Kinda weird the last superhero movie was Flash... kinda feels like a long time ago so maybe that could help Blue Beetle? I think anything over Shazam would be decent.

Looking to be a solid Late summer weekend.

Blue Beetle looks to be a minor breakout. Strays looked to be bigger but seems to have run out if steam.

BB - $25m
Strays - $19m

Blue Beetle at 88% on RT. Huh.

I think beating Shazam 2 OW is possible if latino crowd do come in. There is chatter around bulk booking by the group. I am sure its previews will be above Shazam 2 but it will need to be low 4s to keep 30m in play. Let us see how things go tomorrow.

The first review I saw was gamespot's, who gave it a 3/10. So it was surprising to see the high rottentomatoes score. Looks like most positive reviews are praising how it mixes latin culture into the normal superhero formula. So if you don't care about that kind of thing, the movie will probably be as dull as Shazam 2. But if you care about such things, as millions and millions of people in the country do, then this might be a huge winner. I bet it'll have really good legs no matter what the opening weekend is.

So, potentially one of the best DCEU/DCU (whatever) films is the one WBD has put the least amount of marketing and promotion into... Sounds about right though. At least they're giving it a significant theater count.

Blue Beetle- 30m
Barbie - 23m
Strays- 18m

Thinking 20.6 maybe as high as 22m for Barbie. Need Thursday numbers to fine tune.

Revising my Barbie prediction downward to $20.3 - $20.6M, maybe it gets to $20.9M

Looks like Barbie did a little better than I expected. Also became the 10th movie to break $20M in its 5th wknd (dom). Additionally, Oppy became part of the Top 5 IMAX WW club.

Oppenheimer's top 5 Imax appearance is staggering considering the other 4 all made $2B+ globally and it's mostly a drama biopic. It really is becoming a phenomenon outside of Barbie's shadow on its own with some of these figures.