Welcome to "Box Office Battle," The Fly's weekly preview projecting what the top films will be at the box office this weekend.
OPENING THIS WEEKEND: This weekend's major release is Comcast (CMCSA, CMCSK) subsidiary Universal and Blumhouse's "The Invisible Man," a reboot of the classic Universal monster movie directed by Leigh Whannell and starring Elisabeth Moss. The sci-fi horror thriller grossed $1.65M in Thursday night previews, and will be playing in 3,610 theaters this weekend.
STILL PLAYING: Vying for second place this weekend will be Disney's (DIS) release of 20th Century's family adventure film "The Call of the Wild," starring Harrison Ford and based on the classic Jack London novel, and ViacomCBS (VIAC) subsidiary Paramount's live-action video game adaptation "Sonic the Hedgehog."
CORONAVIRUS CONCERNS: This year was already expected to be a down year for the movie industry, and the impact of the coronavirus is only exacerbating the forecast. The biggest impact is currently being felt in China, which has shut almost 70,000 theaters since last month. One company affected in particular is IMAX (IMAX), as it has a large presence in China. Earlier this week, Barrington analyst James Goss lowered his price target on IMAX to $20 from $24, but kept an Outperform rating on shares. The analyst noted that while IMAX faces "significant" short-term headwinds related to its operations in China from the coronavirus outbreak, the overall impact is expected to be temporary as the theatrical experience broadly -- and the IMAX experience in particular -- remains highly valued by consumers. The current coronavirus outbreak makes projecting installations in the Chinese market uncertain, but overall growth expectations for the rest of IMAX's markets remain robust, Goss told investors in his research note.
OVERALL DOMESTIC PROJECTIONS:
Other publicly traded companies in filmmaking include AT&T (T), Lionsgate (LGF.A, LGF.B) and Sony (SNE).
Lionsgate
-0.05 (-0.67%)
Lionsgate
-0.06 (-0.75%)
AT&T
-0.67 (-1.88%)
Use PARA
+0.99 (+4.14%)
Disney
-2.82 (-2.39%)
Comcast
+ (+0.00%)
Comcast
-1.605 (-3.91%)
Symbol now SONY
+0.35 (+0.57%)
Imax
+0.5 (+3.26%)