Pirates is can understand, since it's been rock-solid 1 billion and can now become an Alice 2 type thing, but why Baywatch? There is no established pattern there, so how would you determine the ceiling for it?
Small rant on that one:
Literally no one is talking about that one or even cares for it from the looks of it ( I certainly don't ). Even a direct plug at the end of SNL's season finale ( "the president is going for a swim" followed by "there is a lot going on there" ) is really just another dick joke (it was a fun gag though, but once you realize what it's a plug for, it's basically a smile-eraser in that 'oh' moment). I mean, I know more than a few *ahem* "parodies" of Baywatch when it was a show, but who in the right mind would buy a ticket for a movie that seems to only have dick jokes going for it? In 2017? To me, that's a direct "and there's the door" type pitch, but maybe I'm a bit too old for that shit as it is. Then again, I never watched the show either.
It's an R-rated action comedy, so there's a few comparison that come to mind for me. The obvious one is 21 Jump Street, which opened to about $36M. You also have Central Intelligence ($35M) and The Heat ($39M). Outside of the action subgenre, The Hangover 3 had an identical 5-day opening over Memorial Day and got $62M despite following the pretty terrible Hangover 2 and having a truly unfunny marketing campaign. Another one is Neighbors, also starring Zac Efron, and that had a $49M 3-day opening.
The name "Baywatch" is recognizable, and The Rock is a bankable star. Considering that, and that Baywatch has generated some strong online buzz, I think you can put the ceiling at around $65M for the 5-day. But a lot of that buzz hasn't been positive, and anecdotally, I think you may be right in that a lot of people are going to see this as a dumb joke. It's a question of whether the marketing has convinced people this is the R-rated comedy film of the summer, or whether general audiences think "A Baywatch remake with explosions? That is so fucking stupid" and check out. If the latter is the general sentiment, it could do very poorly, especially if the film is not good.
edit: I recognize that's sort of contradictory, in that the Baywatch brand could be a positive or a negative. But hopefully that highlights part of why I think this movie is a tough one to predict.
edit 2: I think a good example of what I mean is
Pixels. That film's concept is pretty fantastic, IMO, and that generated a lot of online buzz too. It also starred Adam Sandler, while his popularity was waning, was still considered bankable for this type of role. But I believe that the crowd that would have found the videogame concept appealing were put off by Adam Sandler, and vice versa, so the film was a disappointment. It also didn't help it was terrible.
