Friday Report: Lionsgate this morning is reporting that John Wick: Chapter 4 earned $8.9 million from Thursday’s domestic previews, which began at 3pm.
With this result, the film is on track to meet the high end of expectations for a weekend debut north of $70 million, with mid-range models now pointing to near $75 million and more bullish outlooks looking at a possible $80 million-plus result.
As previews go, this is the highest R-rated performance of the post-pandemic era, besting Jordan Peele’s Nope last summer ($6.4 million) by 39 percent. It also comes in 51 percent ahead of John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, which earned $5.9 million from opening Thursday shows back in May 2019. Nope‘s ultimate weekend tallied $44.4 million, while Parabellum clocked in at $56.8 million.
Peele’s own Us currently holds the second-highest March weekend debut of all-time for an R-rated film at $71.1 million, while Logan is the benchmark at $88.4 million.
For star Keanu Reeves, 2003’s The Matrix Reloaded currently represents his personal best opening weekend ($91.8 million for the three-day portion of its extended opening). While likely a bit out of reach for Wick: Chapter 4, it’s not entirely off the table if word of mouth propels internal weekend projections beyond their normal trendlines.
Independent sampling showed that remaining weekend pre-sales were particularly strong heading into the weekend as Friday outpaced Thursday’s previews by 40 percent, as of Wednesday’s final forecasts.
Other notable preview comps which Chapter 4 has surpassed include the recent Scream VI ($5.7 million), Creed III ($4.03 million from Thursday alone), Black Adam ($7.6 million), Halloween Ends ($5.4 million), No Time to Die ($5.23 million from Thursday), Mission: Impossible – Fallout ($6.0 million), and the entire opening day of The Matrix Resurrections ($6.37 million).
The latter film, released as a theatrical-streaming hybrid in December 2021, will likely see its domestic lifetime $37.7 million gross surpassed by Wick 4 at some point on Saturday.
The Boxoffice Company, which powers showtimes for Google, IMDb, Bing, TikTok, and Apple with its Pulse product, is reporting “John Wick: Chapter 4” is far outpacing “John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum” in opening weekend sales and selling more than 3X as many tickets as “Bullet Train” sold at the same point in the sales cycle.
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