With its truly bizarre advertising, horrible reviews and massive budget, it’s pretty much a lock at this point that Pan will be one of the biggest flops of the year. With a trailer that looks more like someone decided to drop LSD at a Cirque Du Soleil concert rather than a family adventure, Pan is supposedly a prequel to the beloved fairy tale of the same name. The problem is, if you took out the clips of people saying Neverland and Blackbeard, this could easily be marketed as a completely different and unrelated fantasy adventure. It doesn’t help that Pan has a massive $150M budget that it will have a very hard time making back. A relatable title has to be Jupiter Ascending, which had an equally bizarre look and disastrous performance ($183M on a $176M budget). Considering Hotel Transylvania 2 is still doing very solid business, Pan could potentially open with less than $15M this weekend.

Also going into wide release this weekend is The Walk, a new low budget 3D biopic from Robert Zemeckis. The film opened last week exclusively in IMAX 3D, where it had a very poor opening. It made less than $2M from its five day start, less than a third of the $7.2M that Everest made in just one weekend. It may have been affected by the release of The Martian, considering the only competition that Everest had was Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, but it doesn’t really seem like that justifies it being so much lower. The Walk will probably end up with under $5M this weekend.

Of course, the reigining champ is going to be The Martian, which will probably end up with over $30M this weekend after a very strong start. It’s excellent reviews and word of mouth, as well as a lack of major competition for adult audiences should give it a drop in the 30% range. For comparison, Interstellar fell 40% in its second weekend, whereas Gravity fell just 27%. Granted, that 27% drop was completely unprecedented (as was that films entire performance) but it’s not completely out of the question just yet. Regardless, it will likely take in around $34M for the weekend.

Sicario should be able to hold fairly well this weekend with strong word of mouth and buzz from its opening weekend. It will likely take in around $8M for the weekend.

Predictions

The Martian – $34.3M Hotel Transylvania 2 – $23.2M Pan – $14M Sicario – $7.5M The Intern – $6.8M

The Walk – $3.6M

The Bottom Line

Given its massive $150M budget, Pan needs at least $35M this weekend to get a good start, and there is pretty much zero chance that that happens. The Walk has a relatively modest $35M budget, but it still needs at least $10M this weekend. That would be in line with Everest, which had a slightly higher $55M budget. At that level, it’s a fine start.