Tranny Tackles the Cinema: The Films of 3/2
Posted: February 28th, 2018, 6:14 pm
All hail King T'Challa.
With a $111.6 mil haul, good enough for 2nd all-time behind The Force Awakens, Black Panther continued to smash records in its 2nd weekend of release. Ryan Coogler's superhero saga is already outpacing its lofty prerelease tracking by grossing over $400 mil in its first 10 days of release and is now looking like a lock to unseat The Avengers as the highest grossing film in Marvel's wildly successful history.
Despite being in the shadow of Black Panther, openers Game Night and Annihilation were still able to post serviceable debuts. Game Night's $17 mil bow was (somehow) the best OW for an R-rated comedy since last summer's Girls Trip while Annihilation's $11 mil opening is pretty good for a movie that Paramount clearly had no faith in. With a pair of other adult-aimed films opening this weekend, it'll be interesting to see how both of these well-reviewed films hold in their 2nd weekends of release.
Wide Releases:
After a few commercially disappointing projects in a row (Joy, Passengers, mother!) Jennifer Lawrence has reteamed with Hunger Games: Catching Fire and Mockingjay director Francis Lawrence on Red Sparrow (Fox) in the hopes of recapturing the box office dominance her films consistently enjoyed earlier this decade. This espionage thriller focuses on a Russian ballerina (Lawrence) that's blackmailed into joining an elite team of spies known as "Sparrows", who use their bodies as weapons to extract information from and/or kill enemies of the state. This unique arrangement is going great until the femme fatale killing machine falls for a CIA agent (Joel Edgerton) and subsequently entertains the possibility of betraying her country. The plot synopsis certainly seems like its being simplified to obscure the obligatory barrage of twists this genre calls for and from the early reviews that I've read that have highlighted the script's constant misdirection, that deduction seems to accurate.
Barring some more interference from those pesky Russian hackers or repeated mandatory field trips to the theaters by White House staffers to support their pal Vlad that inflate the numbers,Red Sparrow appears primed to be a modest success. I'm expecting an opening in the low 20's, 8 Top 5 points, 2 PTA, an IMDb score in the mid 6's and a final gross between $60 and $70 mil. At its pretty cheap price in MAR-May leagues ($14 BO/$13 ULT), it's definitely worth a look. In the earlier leagues where its priced in the high-teens, it's a decent pick at best.
After spending the past several years as a fixture on the direct-to-video/VOD action movie circuit, Bruce Willis is making his way back to world of theatrically-released shoot'em-ups with Death Wish (MGM/Annapurna). This Eli Roth-helmed remake of the iconic Charles Bronson flick stars Willis as Paul Kirsey, a Chicago doctor whose life falls to pieces when his wife is murdered and daughter is severely injured during a home invasion. Overwhelmed by grief and rage after the police fail to arrest the people responsible for harming his family, Kirsey decides to take to the streets with a pistol and dole out some brutal vigilante justice for the criminals in his community that go unpunished.
When the trailer for Death Wish dropped last August, I figured it was a lock to be bomb. Releasing a pulpy B-action movie in the crowded Thanksgiving marketplace seemed like an absolutely puzzling decision, especially for a studio in Annapurna that's just getting off the ground. The studio brass clearly agreed this was a miscalculation and pushed it to the much friendly pastures of late winter/spring 2018. With this new release date, Death Wish now like it could turn into a mini-hit. MGM has been relentlessly advertising this movie during every single television program, radio show or other media platform that's aimed at a male demographic, and its straightforward premise is likely to bring in old-school action fans that are generally underserved by modern Hollywood. While it might not sneak up on us in the same way, I'm expecting Death Wish to perform like Den of Thieves did a little over a month ago (opening in the mid-teens, $40+ mil cume), if not slightly better. The sheer volume of wide releases over the next couple of weeks will likely prevent it from accumulating the Top 5 and PTA points it would need to be a great ULT pickup, but with a $50-60 mil final gross looking attainable, it's worth a look as a sub-$10 value BO pick.
Limited Release:
Israel's Foxtrot (Sony Classics) was a surprising snub from the Best Foreign Language Film nods at this year's Academy Awards. It's Silver Lion win at Venice, enthusiastic reviews (98% on RT) and a powerful storyline about a solider that was KIA and how his family deals with his death gave it a rock solid resume, but alas it's not in the running for the Academy's top international film honor despite making the shortlist of potential noms in December.
Even if it had the good will that Oscar nom's typically bring, Foxtrot wouldn't have the pedigree of a worldbeater in our game. It's just really hard to be overly optimistic about a foreign-language film chances in the American specialty market, regardless of how strong its reviews are, after watching the similarly well-received A Fantastic Woman and Loveless post middling numbers earlier this month. While there's no denying that Foxtrot should be a decent $4 ULT pick that picks up at least 4-5 PTA and a good IMDb score (currently 7.4 with over 1,000 votes), it's far from an essential one, especially when you look at the cluster of high-upside limited releases (Lean on Pete, You Were Never Really Here, Isle of Dogs) that are on the schedule in late March/early April.
Weekend Projections:
1.Black Panther $63 mil
2.Red Sparrow $21 mil
3.Death Wish $16 mil
4.Game Night $9.5 mil
5.Peter Rabbit $8.5 mil
PTA: Black Panther, Death Wish, Foxtrot, Red Sparrow, Loveless
Tune in next week when six offers up his delightful takes on a jam-packed slate of films headlined by Disney's A Wrinkle in Time, star-studded action comedy [Gringo, 2017 Sundance favorite Thoroughbreds and glorious cheesy weather pun showcase The Hurricane Heist.
With a $111.6 mil haul, good enough for 2nd all-time behind The Force Awakens, Black Panther continued to smash records in its 2nd weekend of release. Ryan Coogler's superhero saga is already outpacing its lofty prerelease tracking by grossing over $400 mil in its first 10 days of release and is now looking like a lock to unseat The Avengers as the highest grossing film in Marvel's wildly successful history.
Despite being in the shadow of Black Panther, openers Game Night and Annihilation were still able to post serviceable debuts. Game Night's $17 mil bow was (somehow) the best OW for an R-rated comedy since last summer's Girls Trip while Annihilation's $11 mil opening is pretty good for a movie that Paramount clearly had no faith in. With a pair of other adult-aimed films opening this weekend, it'll be interesting to see how both of these well-reviewed films hold in their 2nd weekends of release.
Wide Releases:
After a few commercially disappointing projects in a row (Joy, Passengers, mother!) Jennifer Lawrence has reteamed with Hunger Games: Catching Fire and Mockingjay director Francis Lawrence on Red Sparrow (Fox) in the hopes of recapturing the box office dominance her films consistently enjoyed earlier this decade. This espionage thriller focuses on a Russian ballerina (Lawrence) that's blackmailed into joining an elite team of spies known as "Sparrows", who use their bodies as weapons to extract information from and/or kill enemies of the state. This unique arrangement is going great until the femme fatale killing machine falls for a CIA agent (Joel Edgerton) and subsequently entertains the possibility of betraying her country. The plot synopsis certainly seems like its being simplified to obscure the obligatory barrage of twists this genre calls for and from the early reviews that I've read that have highlighted the script's constant misdirection, that deduction seems to accurate.
Barring some more interference from those pesky Russian hackers or repeated mandatory field trips to the theaters by White House staffers to support their pal Vlad that inflate the numbers,Red Sparrow appears primed to be a modest success. I'm expecting an opening in the low 20's, 8 Top 5 points, 2 PTA, an IMDb score in the mid 6's and a final gross between $60 and $70 mil. At its pretty cheap price in MAR-May leagues ($14 BO/$13 ULT), it's definitely worth a look. In the earlier leagues where its priced in the high-teens, it's a decent pick at best.
After spending the past several years as a fixture on the direct-to-video/VOD action movie circuit, Bruce Willis is making his way back to world of theatrically-released shoot'em-ups with Death Wish (MGM/Annapurna). This Eli Roth-helmed remake of the iconic Charles Bronson flick stars Willis as Paul Kirsey, a Chicago doctor whose life falls to pieces when his wife is murdered and daughter is severely injured during a home invasion. Overwhelmed by grief and rage after the police fail to arrest the people responsible for harming his family, Kirsey decides to take to the streets with a pistol and dole out some brutal vigilante justice for the criminals in his community that go unpunished.
When the trailer for Death Wish dropped last August, I figured it was a lock to be bomb. Releasing a pulpy B-action movie in the crowded Thanksgiving marketplace seemed like an absolutely puzzling decision, especially for a studio in Annapurna that's just getting off the ground. The studio brass clearly agreed this was a miscalculation and pushed it to the much friendly pastures of late winter/spring 2018. With this new release date, Death Wish now like it could turn into a mini-hit. MGM has been relentlessly advertising this movie during every single television program, radio show or other media platform that's aimed at a male demographic, and its straightforward premise is likely to bring in old-school action fans that are generally underserved by modern Hollywood. While it might not sneak up on us in the same way, I'm expecting Death Wish to perform like Den of Thieves did a little over a month ago (opening in the mid-teens, $40+ mil cume), if not slightly better. The sheer volume of wide releases over the next couple of weeks will likely prevent it from accumulating the Top 5 and PTA points it would need to be a great ULT pickup, but with a $50-60 mil final gross looking attainable, it's worth a look as a sub-$10 value BO pick.
Limited Release:
Israel's Foxtrot (Sony Classics) was a surprising snub from the Best Foreign Language Film nods at this year's Academy Awards. It's Silver Lion win at Venice, enthusiastic reviews (98% on RT) and a powerful storyline about a solider that was KIA and how his family deals with his death gave it a rock solid resume, but alas it's not in the running for the Academy's top international film honor despite making the shortlist of potential noms in December.
Even if it had the good will that Oscar nom's typically bring, Foxtrot wouldn't have the pedigree of a worldbeater in our game. It's just really hard to be overly optimistic about a foreign-language film chances in the American specialty market, regardless of how strong its reviews are, after watching the similarly well-received A Fantastic Woman and Loveless post middling numbers earlier this month. While there's no denying that Foxtrot should be a decent $4 ULT pick that picks up at least 4-5 PTA and a good IMDb score (currently 7.4 with over 1,000 votes), it's far from an essential one, especially when you look at the cluster of high-upside limited releases (Lean on Pete, You Were Never Really Here, Isle of Dogs) that are on the schedule in late March/early April.
Weekend Projections:
1.Black Panther $63 mil
2.Red Sparrow $21 mil
3.Death Wish $16 mil
4.Game Night $9.5 mil
5.Peter Rabbit $8.5 mil
PTA: Black Panther, Death Wish, Foxtrot, Red Sparrow, Loveless
Tune in next week when six offers up his delightful takes on a jam-packed slate of films headlined by Disney's A Wrinkle in Time, star-studded action comedy [Gringo, 2017 Sundance favorite Thoroughbreds and glorious cheesy weather pun showcase The Hurricane Heist.