This weekend’s box office was expected to be a tight race between Warner Brothers’ Space Jam: A New Legacy and Marvel’s Black Widow, with early estimates placing Black Widow slightly ahead. Now after a successful Friday debut at $13.1 million, Space Jam is taking the lead and is targeting a $32 million domestic opening for the whole weekend.
Black Widow is still estimated to come in around $25.6 million in its second weekend after bringing in only $8 million yesterday. This marks a significant drop for a Marvel title, but it may also have Disney+ to blame. Last week, Disney reported that $80 million of its domestic opening total came from ticket sales, and $60 million from Disney+ Premier Access. A similar trend may happen again this week, as Disney has not yet released any data on its streaming totals in the film’s second week.
Space Jam, though, also now has streaming access available to any HBO Max subscribers, without the premium charge that Disney+ carries for some of its releases. This may be why initial estimates tracked the film to debut at only $20 million, but it looks like families are indeed wanting to come out to the theater to see this fun, long-anticipated title that follows up to the 1996 original.
Other releases this weekend include Escape Room 2, which is on track for $8.6 million for the weekend, and Nicolas Cage’s limited release Pig, which is heading towards $1 million.