Tranny Tackles the Cinema: The Films of 5/5

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Tranny Tackles the Cinema: The Films of 5/5

Post by transformers2 »

Short of the back-to-back years where Marvel placed Avengers movies there, the final weekend of April tends to serve as calm before the storm that is the summer movie season takes hold. This year was no different as there wasn't much noise being made at the box office overall.

The Super Mario Bros Movie inched closer to $500 mil domestic with an impressive $40.8 mil haul that was more than enough to power the mustachioed plumber/go-kart racer/question mark crate-smasher/golfer/tennis player/world-saving hero to his fourth straight weekend atop the box office. Evil Dead Rise showed its resilience/strong WOM with a solid 50% dropoff in weekend #2 ($12.1 mil). Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret added another well-reviewed box office misfire to Kelly Fremon Craig's resume as the Judy Blume adaptation could only muster up a $6.7 mil debut. Finnish B-actioner Sisu performed pretty decently as it racked up $3.3 mil in 1,006 theaters. Big George Foreman put forth one of the worst wide release debuts of the year so far with a ghastly $2.9 mil from just over 3,000 theaters. John Wick: Chapter 4, Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves and Air continued to hang around and hold well for yet another weekend while the newcomers faltered. Bing, bang, boom the spring season is over, now let's move over to the big guns.

Short of the back-to-back years where Marvel placed Avengers movies there, the final weekend of April tends to serve as calm before the storm that is the summer movie season takes hold. This year was no different as there wasn't much noise being made at the box office overall.

The Super Mario Bros Movie inched closer to $500 mil domestic with an impressive $40.8 mil haul that was more than enough to power the mustachioed plumber/go-kart racer/question mark crate-smasher/golfer/tennis player/world-saving hero to his fourth straight weekend atop the box office. Evil Dead Rise showed its resilience/strong WOM with a solid 50% dropoff in weekend #2 ($12.1 mil). Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret added another well-reviewed box office misfire to Kelly Fremon Craig's resume as the Judy Blume adaptation could only muster up a $6.7 mil debut. Finnish B-actioner Sisu performed pretty decently as it racked up $3.3 mil in 1,006 theaters. Big George Foreman put forth one of the worst wide release debuts of the year so far with a ghastly $2.9 mil from just over 3,000 theaters. John Wick: Chapter 4, Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves and Air continued to hang around and hold well for yet another weekend while the newcomers faltered. Bing, bang, boom the spring season is over, now let's move over to the big guns.


Wide Releases:
10 or so years ago, Marvel took a chance on former Troma employee/writer of both live-action Scooby-Doo films James Gunn to bring the adventures of a not very well-known team of misfit outlaws called the Guardians of the Galaxy to the big screen. In August 2014, their risk paid off big time as the oddball sc-fi superhero flick became a huge hit that quickly became a favorite among MCU fans. After a long road that was made even longer by the firing and re-hiring of Gunn and subsequent commitment he made to helm The Suicide Squad for Warner Bros before Disney gave him his job back, their journey is coming to an end with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3 (Disney/Marvel).

Set after the events of Thor: Love and Thunder and more importantly, Avengers: Endgame, the surviving Guardians (Chris Pratt's Star-Lord, Karen Gillian's Nebula, Dave Bautista's Drax, Pom Klementieff's Mantis, Bradley Cooper's Rocket Racoon, Vin Diesel's Groot, Sean Gunn's Kraglin) have settled down after years of flying around to different planets saving many different species from miscellaneous threats to their safety. When a threat from Rocket's past (Chukwudi Iwuji) reemerges, the Guardians must embark on a dangerous mission that has huge consequences for the present and future of the team. An alternate universe version of the deceased Gamora (Zoe Saldana) factors into the story as well, but I'm not sure how at this point.

At the risk of sounding completely hyperbolic, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3 could play a massive role in dictating the future of the MCU. The mixed-to-negative reaction for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania appears to have rapidly accelerated the fatigue that has slowly been building towards the brand over the past 18 months or so as they've put together a string of projects on both the big screen and Disney+ that have mostly been met with either polarized reactions (Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Ms. Marvel, Moon Knight) or flat-out hate (Thor: Love and Thunder, Eternals, She-Hulk, the aforementioned Quantumania).

While Guardians is unlikely to suffer the same historic drops as Quantumania (the positive early word all but confirms that), the broader MCU damage might already be done. Advance ticket sales haven't been overly impressive by Marvel standards (based on what I've seen at my local AMC's, getting 2-4 next to each other in a row that isn't in the very front can be done in most screenings that aren't Dolby shows on Thursday or Friday night) and the $120 mil tracking figure would put it well below the $146.5 opening of Vol.2 on the same weekend 6 years ago. For a confirmed series finale, that's a not-so-great figure and if one of Marvel's best-received franchise's can't get people to show up like they used to, what the hell will besides Spider-Man and maybe Deadpool and the upcoming Fantastic Four reboot? Ultimately, it probably won't do poorly enough to be dubbed a bomb, but it seems like it could very well fail to match the $300+ mil finishes of both of its predecessors.

Price: $53 ULT/$63 BO
Predictions: $105-135 mil OW/8-15 PTA/13-21 Top 5/mid to high 7 IMDB/$235-350 mil total BO
Worth Putting on Your Slate?: Given its comically high price and uncertain ceiling, no.


Counter-programming has become kind of a lost art in Hollywood these days, especially since the return of a semi-”normal” theatrical release schedule in June 2021. On the rare occasions this practice has been utilized during this nearly 2-year period, it's produced some hits of varying sizes such as The Black Phone, Ticket to Paradise and most recently, Air. I'd imagine we'll see another successful case of it in July when Barbie and Oppenheimer descend upon cinemas on the same weekend.

Sony is hoping to drink from this elusive cup of old-timey box office success this weekend with Love Again (Sony/Screen Gems). On paper, it's a winning idea. A romantic dramedy with two well-established actors in Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Sam Heughan in the lead roles that also happens to prominently feature the music of Celine Dion (who also stars as herself) is something that absolutely caters to an older, female-skewing audience that isn't the target base for Guardians. In practice, it almost certainly won't. Sony's ad campaign has been pretty quiet (although my mom did ask me over the weekend if I was going to see it based on the volume of ad's she's seen for it on the Food Network!!!) and the fact that it wrapped shooting in early 2021 and is just now being released could be a bad sign for its quality. Expect an opening somewhere in the mid-to-high single digits ahead of a decent hold for Mother's Day weekend before it gets ran out of theaters by either the cluster of wide releases arriving on Memorial Day weekend or the Spider-Verse/Boogeyman tandem the week after.
Price: $8 ULT/$9 BO
Predictions: $3-9 mil OW/1-3 PTA/1-4 Top 5/mid to high 6 IMDB/$10-27 mil total BO
Worth Putting on Your Slate?: Probably not.


Weekend Predictions:
1.Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3 $115 mil
2.The Super Mario Bros. Movie $27 mil
3.Evil Dead Rise $7 mil
4.Love Again $5 mil
5.Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret $4 mil

PTA: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Evil Dead Rise, Love Again, Other People's Children
BRING BRENDAN FRASER BACK TO THE BIG SCREEN DAMN IT
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Re: Tranny Tackles the Cinema: The Films of 5/5

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Love Again's getting dumped basically. Don't be surprised if it opens to less than Big George Foreman did.
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Re: Tranny Tackles the Cinema: The Films of 5/5

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Love Again got the "not screened for critics" treatment. This is going to tank. Hard.
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Re: Tranny Tackles the Cinema: The Films of 5/5

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Preview totals:
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3 $17.5 mil (ironically, this matches Quantumania's preview haul. Will be interesting to see if/how its trajectory differs for the rest of the weekend)
Love Again $240k (that's $30k less than Big George Foreman did last week, so kudos to you Boosh)
BRING BRENDAN FRASER BACK TO THE BIG SCREEN DAMN IT
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Re: Tranny Tackles the Cinema: The Films of 5/5

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Weekend Estimates:
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3 $114 mil
The Super Mario Bros. Movie $18.6 mil
Evil Dead Rise $5.7 mil
Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret $3.4 mil
Love Again/John Wick: Chapter 4 $2.4 mil
Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves $1.5 mil
Air $1.4 mil
The Covenant $1.2 mil
Sisu $1.1 mil
BRING BRENDAN FRASER BACK TO THE BIG SCREEN DAMN IT
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Re: Tranny Tackles the Cinema: The Films of 5/5

Post by Buscemi2 »

A real letdown for Guardians of the Galaxy, as it will open with more than $30 million less than the second film's opening and will sell slightly fewer tickets than the first film did on opening weekend.

Now, there's been suggestions of superhero fatigue but Guardians of the Galaxy is a marquee franchise for Marvel. There seems to be other factors in play here. Was six years too long of a wait? Or could James Gunn backlash be the case, given some of his handlings with the DC properties?
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Re: Tranny Tackles the Cinema: The Films of 5/5

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Calling it a letdown is a bit of a stretch-especially since the initial tracking numbers had it only making around $90 mil, but it's definitely not an overly impressive start for the trilogy-capper for an established MCU brand. As for the cause, it's kind of a choose your adventure situation. 6-year gap between sequels, superhero fatigue, disconnected from the current MCU, poor reception of the recent projects-particularly Eternals, Love and Thunder and Quantumania, Marvel reverting back to Phase 2 grosses since there isn't another Avengers movies on the horizon/inflated expectations due to what Black Panther/Captain Marvel/Infinity War/Endgame/No Way Home made, marketing campaign or really any narrative you can think of that isn't completely disconnected from the consensus public opinion towards the MCU or human behavior on the whole. It'll be exciting to play this game again in November when The Marvels comes out and doesn't have a $150+ mil opening.
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Re: Tranny Tackles the Cinema: The Films of 5/5

Post by transformers2 »

Weekend Actuals:
1.Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3 $118.4 mil
2.The Super Mario Bros. Movie $18.6 mil
3.Evil Dead Rise $5.9 mil
4.Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret $3.4 mil
5.Love Again $2.4 mil
6.John Wick: Chapter 4 $2.3 mil
7.Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves $1.5 mil
8.Air $1.4 mil
9.The Covenant $1.2 mil
10.Sisu $1.1 mil

PTA:
1.Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.3 $26,610
2.The Super Mario Bros. Movie $4,746
3.Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania $4,061
4.Evil Dead Rise $1,937
5.Suzume $1,755

-Love Again $881
BRING BRENDAN FRASER BACK TO THE BIG SCREEN DAMN IT
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