After last weekend’s relatively excellent opening for Godzilla vs. Kong, the theatrical market is treading water this time around, based on the studios’ Sunday morning estimates. GvK itself is performing a little worse than expected, although not terribly considering its coming off the biggest weekend of the pandemic. Voyagers will earn a disappointing $1.35 million opening, and the returning films are something of a mixed bag.

There will be no prizes for predicting the winner at the box office this weekend, but the race for second place looks as though it’ll be close, with three returning films—Nobody, Raya and the Last Dragon, The Unholy—and debutant Voyagers all looking like they have a shot. Here’s what our model thinks going into the weekend…

Godzilla vs. Kong enters its second full weekend after scoring a remarkable $48m in its first five days of release. That number far exceeded expectations, which were originally in the $20m-$30m range. We expect the monster film to hover close to its 3,064 count from last week, and possibly add a few extra theaters. The only new wide release this week is the debut of Lionsgate’s sci-fi thriller Voyagers, starring Tye Sheridan and Lily-Rose Depp, opening in 1,972 locations. Nobody goes from 2,567 theaters last week to 2,392 this week, while Raya and the Last Dragon dips below the 2,000 theater mark, coming in on 1,941 locations. New this week is Moffie, the early 1980s set drama starring Kai Luke Brummer. The film, being released by IFC Films, opens in 51 theaters.

MCU action movie starring Scarlett Johansson opens in theaters and as a PVOD release on Disney+ on July 9. Full movie details… Natasha Romanoff aka Black Widow confronts the darker parts of her ledger when a dangerous conspiracy with ties to her past arises. Pursued by a force that will stop at nothing to bring her down, Natasha must deal with her history as a spy and the broken relationships left in her wake long before she became an Avenger.

Godzilla vs. Kong will earn $32.2 million over the Friday–Sunday weekend, and deliver a $48.5-million 5-day opening, according to Warner Bros.’ Sunday morning projection. The film will earn an additional $3 million in Canada from its PVOD release there, which the studio offered to allow Canadian audiences to see the film while around 80% of the Canadian market remains closed. It’s also showing on HBO Max in the US, but the studio hasn’t offered any numbers on its performance there.

Godzilla vs. Kong has stormed out the gate over the past two days, at least by pandemic standards. Its $9.6-million opening day was the best single day by a film in the past year, and it didn’t drop by all that much yesterday, posting $6.7 million. That puts it on track for easily the biggest weekend box office for a film since theaters started reopening. Predicting how much it will make is complicated by its unusual release pattern—opening on Wednesday in 2,409 theaters and expanding to 3,064 theaters today—and by the fact that, well, there’s still a pandemic on.

Godzilla vs. Kong opened on Wednesday in 2,409 theaters to impressive box office numbers as it became the highest-earning film on a single day of the pandemic era with an estimated $9.6m. The previous holder of that title was another Warner Bros. film, Wonder Woman 1984, which took in $7.5m back on Christmas Day. The highly-anticipated monster showdown film expands to 3,064 locations on Friday, which also makes it the widest opening weekend since theaters started reopening. It is projected to earn $20m-$30m in its first five days. As per Warner Bros.’ 2021 release plan, the film is also playing simultaneously on HBO Max for 30 days.

Warner Bros. reported a $9.6-million opening day for Godzilla vs. Kong this morning, the best single day at the box office since Onward’s opening weekend back in March last year. Coupled with bigger-than-expected debut outings for Tom and Jerry and Nobody, the signs point towards a growing domestic theatrical market as theaters open up, people get vaccinated, and (fingers crossed) the US and Canada emerge from the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic. I’ll have more to say on Godzilla vs. Kong’s opening in tomorrow’s weekend prediction column, but today I’m pleased to introduce our long-range box office forecast. This extends our weekend prediction model to all films currently on the release schedule through the end of 2021, and also predicts how much each film will make in total. Each month, I’ll provide a monthly snapshot here on The Numbers, and full details will be in our monthly Bankability Report, available by subscription.