A decent Thursday “preview” and solid Friday points to a $16-17 million opening weekend for the video gamer-turned-racer “true story” “Gran Turismo,” not bad for the next to last weekend of summer, but wholly justifying the release strategy of playing it in IMAX and 4DX (shaky seats) theaters for a couple of weekends before releasing it.

Not everybody thinks that’s cricket. But we’ll see if the bean-counters and “opening weekend” judges allow it.

When your “name” stars are Orlando Bloom and David Harbour and your subject if Euro sports car (LeMans, etc) racing in Nissans, you’ll take what you can get.

A fun movie for any car enthusiast (like moi).

“Barbie” is closing in on the $600 million mark at the North American box office and will clear it by next Friday, I figure, making it the Official Movie of the Summer of ’23. As this feminist satiric farce is slated to max out at $15.8 million, there’s a chance it could reclaim the top spot on Sunday.

One reason? Sunday is the annual NATO (National Theater Owners, also hated by Russia) “National Cinema Day,” with some 3000 screens nationwide offering tickets to see the summer’s hits for just $4.

Damn. Go to the movies, people. Get out of the heat. Get your “Barbie/Oppenheimer” et al on.

Deadline.com is saying that a huge fall-off on its second Friday will allow “Blue Beetle” to still clear $10 million on its second weekend. My math and guessing says “maybe not.” A shame, but mixed reviews didn’t help this one, even though it is chock full of representation, uplifting Mexican-American messaging and whatnot. Its target audience fanboys and fangirls and the Latin community — did not show up

The epic “Oppenheimer” will fall just short of $8, as things stand Friday night.

“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” will add almost $6 million and fall just shy of $100 million, domestically. A big National Cinema Day and maybe that spikes.

Liam Neeson’s half-decent thriller “Retribution” may clear $3-3.3 million. It’s not terrible, but not all that, and his demo is older and whiter and not hitting the cinemas in great numbers as they age. Except for “Sound of Freedom.”

The middling Dennis Quaid baseball drama “The Hill” won’t clear much more than $2.5 million, “Golda” is coming in at $1.7 or so, says @TheNumbers

“Bottoms” from MGM, which is in very limited release (a platformed roll-out) is winning the per screen average sweepstakes at $48k.

Will any or all of those latter titles surpass the last days “The Voyage of the Demeter,” “Haunted Mansion” or “Sound of Freedom?”