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Period horror film 'Winchester' duels with Eagles, Patriots

Period horror movie "Winchester" is gunning for box office dollars this week, but it will face some fierce competition from holdovers and the Super Bowl.

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"Winchester"
Source: Lionsgate

The Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. film will be the only debut to challenge the big game, illustrating the reticence of studios to put up titles against the biggest television event of the year. But that does not mean audiences won't show up, as Deadline Hollywood points out. Action dramas "American Sniper" and "Taken" each collected over $24 million over Super Bowl weekend during their respective years at the box office.

"Winchester" is based on the real-life story of the eccentric heiress to the namesake firearms fortune, who constructed an elaborate house of secret passages to keep away from haunting spirits. A list of comparisons compiled by Kagan, a media research unit of S&P Global Market Intelligence, puts the debut beside past horror films like "The Amityville Horror," The Woman in Black" and "Crimson Peak," and the comparisons yielded mixed results. "The Amityville Horror" opened to $23.5 million and exited with total revenue of $222.3 million and a 23.3% profit margin. Meanwhile, "Crimson Peak" opened to $13.1 million and exited underwater by about $50.0 million. The average profit margin for the group of five titles was negative 11.4%.

BoxOffice.com expects the debut to gross $8.5 million. The Hollywood Reporter is looking for $7 million to $9 million. Deadline, meanwhile, goes a little lower with a range of $6 million to $8 million.

Both BoxOffice.com and the Reporter forecast holdovers "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle" and "Maze Runner: Death Cure" to outpace "Winchester," with each projected to collect $9 million or more. That result would likely push "Jumanji" to about $352 million in total domestic gross, making it Sony Corp.'s third-best studio film domestically, according to Deadline.

The slow weekend should give theaters a chance to brace for a booming Presidents' Day weekend two turns later. Walt Disney Co. will drop its latest Marvel blockbuster "Black Panther." Tracking shows the film challenging "Deadpool's" $152 million record-setting debut for the long holiday weekend, according to Variety, with Fandango's advance sales outpacing all other superhero movies.

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