Four wide releases are splitting the late September box office into distinct audience buckets, and Thursday previews suggest the top slot may be tighter than the tracking implied. Sony/Constantin’s Resident Evil, with $76.8M cume through Wednesday, is projected at $21M-$24M in its second weekend.
Previews land in a narrow band
Disney/Marvel Studios’ Avengers: Endgame: Encore collected around $3M-plus from showtimes that began at 2 p.m. A24’s R-rated Primetime, the first narrative feature from documentary filmmaker Lance Oppenheim, began previews at 4 p.m. and was chasing that figure with an estimated $2M-$3M, according to Deadline sources.
Those early grosses put Primetime ahead of previews for Robert Pattinson’s The Drama ($1.7M), Mickey 17 ($2.5M) and the Gen-Z horror title Obsession ($2.6M). Paramount’s Heart of the Beast landed around $1.8M, while Universal/DreamWorks Animation’s Forgotten Island was estimated at $800K-$1M.
One distribution source told Deadline: “It could be a three way fight for No. 1.”
Four demos, one frame
The weekend is a clean counterprogramming exercise. Each title is aimed at a different pocket of moviegoers:
- Encore: Marvel fanboys, boosted by four extra minutes of Avengers: Doomsday footage and a new premium large-format certification on 1,300 PLF screens plus 390 Imax hubs.
- Primetime: Gen-Z and Pattinson fans, with reviews at 86% certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.
- Heart of the Beast: older men and women in flyover markets, with an 89% certified fresh score and about $15M expected abroad.
- Forgotten Island: families, following the late-September animated slot pattern.
That segmentation could push the total frame to the best late September since 2018, when all films combined to $106.4M. Primetime is also opening in France, Germany, Austria, Taiwan, Iceland, India, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, while Heart of the Beast reaches 63 international markets.
What the numbers mean
Encore is also a test of re-release front-loading. Its preview cash could pass the $3.4M preview from the Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith re-release, which translated into a $25.4M opening, but re-releases can burn demand early. Disney is in wait-and-see mode on whether continuing the run can close the $124M worldwide gap between Avatar ($2.92B) and Avengers: Endgame ($2.799B) before Doomsday opens Dec. 18.
For distribution and marketing teams, the actionable read is to track previews against comp titles rather than rely on opening-weekend projections. A fan-heavy title can post a strong preview and still leg out differently from an R-rated title driven by reviews.
Source: Deadline
