This year has been a pretty bad one in terms of the box office — especially given some of the big swings the industry has had in the past several months. According to Box Office Mojo, total box office grosses are down around 6.2 percent compared to last year, and last weekend’s box office receipts were the worst the industry has seen in 15 years. Even worse, for the first time since 2006, the summer box office is set to miss the $4 billion mark.

Of course, right now we’re currently in that awkward season between big blockbusters and Oscar-contenders/holiday blockbusters, so that isn’t incredibly surprising. But that’s not to say 2017 doesn’t have some surprises up its sleeves. One such film we’ll be keeping an eye on this coming month of September is Kingsman: The Golden Circle, the sequel to the 2014 sleeper hit Kingsman: The Secret Service.

According to THR, the film is set to open on the weekend of September 22 between $40 million and $45 million in North America. For comparison, that first film debuted at $36.2 million, and still managed to earn a respectable $414 million worldwide on the incredible strengths of word of mouth. This is good news, but in order to compete with that first entry with that figure, it’ll need to have a similar sort of staying power, and in order to do that, it’ll need to be a good film (and we have every right to expect it will).

This opening may be enough to defeat the LEGO Ninjago Movie, which is coming out the same weekend — though we recognize that the demographics between a hard-R action film and a family film are very different. Tracking points to that film hitting between $35 million and $40 million. This is substantially less than the $53 million that the LEGO Batman Movie made, and given that that film had a disappointing haul (though not unprofitable), one has to wonder what the staying power is for this franchise, considering it’s on a downward trajectory.

All in all, so long as these movies have good word of mouth, it looks like the weekend of September 22 could be a solid one for the box office, and would mark a year-over-year increase from 2016.

What do you think of these numbers? Let us know your thoughts down below!

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SOURCE: THR, Variety