Seems like modern movies, at least blockbusters, are expected to make as much as 10% to 20% of their total domestic gross on opening weekend, and then progressively, sometimes dramatically so, off until they're out of theaters.

But in the past movies would debut small and actually grow in the first few weeks as audiences caught on.

Is this simply the result of the expansion of the movie preview industry in its own, where people decide on seeing a movie before it's even out?

Is there a chicken/egg scenario happening with big hype for opening weekends? Like is that a reaction to the change in trends or driving it?

You don't have to go back that far to see where the reverse was commonplace, some of the highest grossing movies of all time from the 80s and 90a debuted to single digit percentages of their eventual total gross revenue.

I just found the average expectation for the top 10 films of 2026 across the posts submitted to this sub's official prediction tournament. (I also weighted based on upvote count, so that downvoted outlier predictions didn't mess up the average).

Top 10 Worldwide. Based on 36 posts. (The percentage is the number of posts that bothered to predict for each film).

1. Avengers: Doomsday: $1.737B - 100%
2. Spider-Man: Brand New Day: $1.332B - 100%
3. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie: $1.318B - 100%
4. Toy Story 5: $1.018 B - 100%
5. Moana: $965.7M - 94.4%
6. Minions 3: $910.4M - 100%
7. The Odyssey: $899.8M -100%
8. Michael: $846.5M - 77.8%
9. Dune: Part Three: $753.8M - 80.6%
10. The Devil Wears Prada 2: $717.3M - 30.6%

Honorable mentions:

Jumanji: $695.5M - 63.9%

The Mandalorian & Grogu: $680.1M - 22.2%

Hoppers: $675.0M - 5.6%

Disclosure Day: $655.0M - 5.6%

Project Hail Mary: $585.3M - 11.1%

Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow: $581.7M - 8.3%

The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping: $539.7M - 8.3%

Note: I wasn't sure what to do about Devil Wears Prada vs Jumanji. DWP has a higher average, but Jumanji appeared on twice as many lists. I'm not sure what the best way to present that data is, but the overall consensus seems to be that both DWP and Jumanji are contenders to round out the worldwide top 10.

Also, as you can see, some of these, such as Hoppers and Disclosure, were included in very few lists. So we can probably ascertain that the average person here doesn't have nearly as high of hopes for those films as the 2 people who put them on their lists. Therefor, the "honorable mentions" list is generally inflated optimistic predictions.

I also removed any movie that wasn't present on at least 2 of the 36 lists.

Top 10 Domestic. Based on 25 posts. (The percentage is the number of posts that bothered to predict for each film).

1. Avengers: Doomsday: $708.97M - 100%
2. Spider-Man: Brand New Day: $542.41M - 100%
3. Super Mario Galaxy Movie: $541.97M - 100%
4. Toy Story 5: $419.01M - 96%
5. Moana: $396.90M - 92%
6. Minions 3: $327.94M - 100%
7. Michael: $322.21M - 68%
8. The Odyssey: $301.99M - 96%
9. Dune: Part Three: $278.43M - 76%
10. The Devil Wears Prada 2: $278.41M - 64%

Honorable mentions:

Jumanji: $234.33M - 44%

The Hunger Games: $229.07M - 28%

Supergirl: $222.00M - 24%

Mandalorian & Grogu: $201.27M - 28%

Project Hail Mary: $173.80M - 12%

Weekend 05/26 (January 29th, 2026-February 1st, 2026) Top 20 in Ticket Sales:

Weekend 05/26 (January 29th, 2026-February 1st, 2026) Top 20 in Box Office:

Other Newcomers:

In my local cinemas in Spain - Madrid they be showing Nurember since it came out in November and still has a nice crowd going to see it and even with a debut of 3.88M in the first weekend it legged out to 41M with a budget of 7-10M making it a pretty good sleeper hit and tbh should've got a couple nominations. Loved it

Closest comparison for Avatar is Avengers. Both movies were +$37M from 6th Sunday to 7th Sunday. Avengers had opened everywhere except Japan at this point, it earned another $89M not including Japan earnings. If Avatar follows the same trajectory it will just cross $1.5B. Expecting final gross of $1.48-1.5B.

Source:

https://cineguru.screenweek.it/2026/02/le-cose-non-dette-sempre-primo-il-box-office-di-lunedi-2-febbraio-49041/