October has been a pretty light month at the box office. The only blockbuster release, Tron: Ares, saw its momentum collapse, and it’ll reportedly cost Disney over $100 million. Black Phone 2 is proving successful for Blumhouse, but a number of more adult-oriented films, including After the Hunt, Good Fortune, and Roofman, are struggling to leave much of a mark.
There’s hope that Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere will catch fire in the vein of last year’s Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, but it’ll still end up being a soft month. There’s a real chance that KPop Demon Hunters and Sinners wipe the floor with the new movies over Halloween weekend.
November, however, is stacked with major titles, and many of them will likely own their own weekends. Predator: Badlands is the big dog alongside a number of artsier titles, while Wicked: For Good opens the weekend before Thanksgiving, leaving Zootopia 2 to debut over the holiday. Those two movies will be looking to repeat last year’s magic between Wicked and Moana 2, which actually boosted each other rather than squabbling over the same demographics.
The only exception is November 14, which features two marquee plays: Now You See Me: Now You Don’t, the third installment in the series about magicians committing heists; and The Running Man, a Stephen King adaptation from Edgar Wright starring Glen Powell. And if tracking data is anything to go by, the competition between them will be fierce.
Tracking Data Has Now You See Me vs. The Running Man Getting Ever Closer
Josh Brolin leaning forward and pointing in The Running Man
According to TheQuorum, which tracks films’ interest and awareness in the weeks leading up to its release, Now You See Me 3 started well ahead. In June, 36% of survey respondents were aware of the movie and 44% were interested, compared to 16.5% and 38% respectively for The Running Man. That’s the benefit of being part of an established franchise.
But as the months ticked by, and the studios’ marketing pushes took effect, Wright and Powell’s movie gained ground. As of its latest survey, on October 20, its scores stand at 38.5% aware and 47% interested, making significant strikes in both categories. Now You See Me: Now You Don’t, as of October 16, is at 45.5% aware and 50% interested – still ahead, but with half the lead it started with.
The next few weeks ahead of their releases will be critical for both films, so expect to see marketing materials ramp up. As a sequel, Now You See Me will probably always lead the way in terms of awareness, and it should be considered the favorite to win the weekend. But the closing gap in interest should make for a close race.
That said, the underdog has an added disadvantage. These movies will be playing against Predator: Badlands in its second weekend (which at 33% aware and 38.5% interested is actually tracking below both), and of the two, The Running Man has more of an audience overlap. If Predator nails the execution and generates great word of mouth, perhaps cancelling out fan anxiety over the PG-13 rating, it could steal Running Man’s thunder.
Best case scenario, all three succeed. But how this plays out will tell us whether Hollywood will regret trying to stuff so much into November, when October was left so open.