SPECTRE Scores $5.3 million in Its Domestic Thursday Previews

James Bond’s 25th adventure SPECTRE opened for Thursday night previews in North America where it grossed an estimated $5.3 million

After opening overseas and grossing over $80 million in its first week (and thought to be past $100 million, including the last couple of days), the 24th James Bond movie SPECTRE opened in North America for Thursday night previews last night, taking in $5.25 million in 3,221 theaters.

SPECTRE expands into 3,929 theaters today in its official nationwide release, but it will be hard to make a direct comparison to the last Bond movie, 2012’s Skyfall, which similarly opened overseas before coming to North America. Thursday previews were not as common back then and it instead opened in IMAX theaters a day in advance and took in $2.2 million on Thursday night, then it opened at midnight in more theaters where it took in another $2.4 million just from midnight screenings.

Skyfall went on to gross $90.5 million over its first four days in North America and $304.4 million overall domestic and $1.1 billion, including international box office.

On the other hand, we can compare it to the other recent spy action movie Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation, which took in $4 million in Thursday previews on its way to $55.5 million opening weekend and $195 million domestic.

That may not bode well for SPECTRE if it uses a similar mathematical equation to figure out its weekend take, which would be in the high-$60 to low-$70 million range, opening quite a bit lower than Skyfall. But it did better in Thursday previews than both Ridley Scott’s The Martian ($2.5 million) and Straight Outta Compton ($5 million) and those had opening weekends of $55 and $60 million, respectively, so it seems like $65 million is the lowest it might go.