Street Fighter Leads a Four-Film Weekend as You Can See Everything Chases a Documentary Breakout

Video game movies have become one of the most reliable openers in the business, and Street Fighter is the next one up. A Minecraft Movie opened to $162.8M last year, the three Sonic films all opened above $58M, and Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 did $64.0M last December. The fighting game corner of the genre has been a different story though, and that’s exactly the lane that Street Fighter is in this weekend. Mortal Kombat II opened to $38.5M in May and finished at $79.8M, largely seen as an underperformance considering expectations and budget, and even that feels like a leap too high this weekend for Street Fighter. This comparison is more for fun than serious science, but the original Street Fighter in 1994 opened to just $9.5M on its way to $33.4M domestic and $100M worldwide, which you’d have to hope is well below where this new one finishes up.

Tracking has been coming down steadily for a month. Our range started at $26–35M at the end of September, briefly went up to $28–38M, and this week has stabilized in the mid $20s. Paramount has it in 3,500 theaters, and the reviews landed this week at 40% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 46 on Metacritic. That’s not a disaster for this genre (Mortal Kombat II wasn’t a critical darling either), but it also means there’s no reviews-driven push to get anyone outside the fanbase to show up.

The closest comp beyond the recent Mortal Kombat is probably Masters of the Universe, which opened to $29.4M in June off a similar nostalgia pitch and finished at $64.8M. Street Fighter has a stronger brand among people under 40 and a much more manageable budget: Legendary and Capcom co-financed it for $82M, with Paramount only distributing.

Overseas is where the math gets more interesting. Variety has it projected for around $35M from 65 markets this weekend, so a global start somewhere around $60M is on the table. The 1994 film made two thirds of its money outside North America, and Capcom’s audience in Asia is a huge part of why this got made, so the domestic number will only be half the story for Legendary.

This is the most interesting film of the weekend, even if it’s a documentary only opening in 800 theaters. Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim (who also directed Primetime, which opened to $18.8M for A24 last month) spent three years making a film about Elizabeth Holmes in the weeks before she went to prison, and nobody knew it existed until it screened at Telluride in September. Since then it’s been sitting at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes from 66 reviews, a 99 on Metacritic and a 4.3 on Letterboxd, which is about as good as reviews get. It also became the biggest documentary presale in Alamo Drafthouse history.

The big catch, at least for this first weekend, is the release rollout. A24 is opening it in about 800 theaters before going wide next Friday, and it runs 2 hours 54 minutes, so it gets maybe three shows a day on each screen, although we expect theaters to show it on multiple screens this weekend as we’ve seen quite a few sellouts already. Even with all that, Variety has it at $7–8M and Box Office Theory at $8–13M, which would be a $10K+ per-theater average on 800 screens. For context, Melania opened to $7.2M from 1,778 theaters in January, the biggest non-music documentary opening in over a decade, and the all-time record holder is still Fahrenheit 9/11, which opened to $22.0M from just 868 theaters in 2004 and went on to $119.0M. If it was a wider release, this would have a real shot at $20M, but even still, this one has potential to break double digits this weekend before a big expansion next week.

Brian Duffield’s adaptation of the Daniel Kraus novel has one of the simpler pitches this year: a diver gets swallowed by a sperm whale and has an hour of oxygen to get out. Disney has it in 3,065 theaters, the reviews are good at 71% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 59 on Metacritic, and Duffield’s last film, No One Will Save You, became a word of mouth hit on Hulu, plus Austin Abrams is coming hot off of Resident Evil, adding to the hype here a little. We wouldn’t expect this to be presales-heavy, as an original property, and that has been the case. It’s going to need strong walk-up business to get it to double digits this weekend, but it is the kind of movie that definitely has the potential to entice casual moviegoers, so we’ll see if that happens.

The survival thriller comps all opened in the low teens and legged out well. Crawl opened to $12.0M in 2019 and finished at $39.0M, 47 Meters Down did $11.2M on its way to $44.3M, and The Shallows opened to $16.8M and got to $55.1M. We’d expect it to end up on the lower end of those, which is a fine result until you consider the $60M budget; those other three films cost between $5M and $17M each. Even a Shallows-sized run would leave it a long way short of matching its budget here.

Other Mommy won last weekend with $27.8M, comfortably above our $18–24M call, but the D+ CinemaScore was the lowest grade since Megalopolis in September 2024, and it’s already starting to show a little. Monday’s holiday helped it to $2.9M, Tuesday held steady at $2.9M, and then Wednesday fell 43% to $1.7M. That still has it at $35.2M after six days, nearly double its $19M budget already.

Verity is the clearest preview of what a weak grade does to a film that opened big with a younger audience. It had a C+ and fell 63% last weekend. Other Mommy’s grade is worse, it had $3.6M in previews pulling money forward into its opening, and there’s a bunch of new releases this weekend that should all eat into the audience here.

Focus has the only film this weekend aimed squarely at older women, and that audience has shown up this fall: Practical Magic 2 is at $67.8M and Verity is at $57.7M. But let’s be honest: this is not the same beast as those films… not even close. Daisy Edgar-Jones and Esmé Creed-Miles play the Dashwood sisters, it cost $25M, and the reviews are good at 76% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 71 on Metacritic. Austen adaptations have mostly started small and built: Ang Lee’s 1995 version opened to $3.3M in 70 theaters and got to $43.0M, and Pride & Prejudice in 2005 opened to $2.9M in 215 theaters and finished at $38.6M. This one is going straight to 2,436 theaters, so it doesn’t get that slow build, but it has a lot of competition right now for the same audience, so it should stay in the mid single digits this weekend.