Movie Preview: July 2018

The box office is booming in 2018 as a record-breaking $1.269 billion June, which bested 2013's previous June record of $1.246 billion, led to a record-breaking second quarter for the box office with $3.328 billion. The previous record for a second quarter of the year was in 2015 with $3.086 billion. This means that 2018 is still on a record-breaking year-to-date pace with $6.264 billion as of July 2, just over 9 percent ahead of both 2017 and 2016. June itself was yet again propelled by a Disney-distributed film as "Incredibles 2" pulled in $425.5 million, which was followed by Universal's "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom," which earned $245.9 million in June, and Warner Bros.' "Ocean's 8,"  which earned $112.3 million. Holdovers from previous months came in next with "Solo: A Star Wars Story," "Deadpool 2" and "Avengers: Infinity" followed by decent mid-sized totals from "Tag" ($39.2 million), "Hereditary" ($38.6 million) and "Adrift" ($30.0 million). Now we move forward to July, which is traditionally the biggest month of the summer for the box office. In fact, dating back to 1982, which is the earliest year Box Office Mojo has box office totals for, there's only been five years where July hasn't ruled the summer: 1983, 1984, 1987, 2014 and 2015. Can 2018 continue the trend?

July 4th - 8th-

With Independence Day falling on a Wednesday, it makes for a long five-day weekend at the box office, yet only one of our two new releases will be taking advantage of that and that movie is NOT Marvel's Ant-Man and the Wasp, which will open on Friday, July 6. One of the biggest questions that fans had coming out of "Avengers: Infinity War" was where were Ant-Man and The Wasp? In fact, Marvel themselves posed this question with the cast of "Infinity War" in a teaser video advertising the release of the Official Trailer #2 back in May. This question will most likely be answered in this sequel to 2015's "Ant-Man," which sees Evangeline Lilly's character of The Wasp get an increased role after a post-credit scene in "Ant-Man" saw her father finally give her the suit his wife used back in the day. In 2015, "Ant-Man" was actually Marvel's second lowest opening weekend with just $57.2 million, ahead of only 2008's "The Incredible Hulk." However, strong reviews and positive word of mouth helped it hold on quite well as it ended up with Marvel's fourth highest multiplier. Chances are that this goodwill from the first movie will lead to a much higher opening weekend, potentially closer to the likes of the $85 million of both "Doctor Strange" and "Thor: The Dark World."

The movie that will open right on Wednesday July 4 is the fourth movie in The Purge franchise titled The First Purge. It's been a bit of a trendy thing with horror franchises to go back and tell the origins of said franchise, which is what "Ouija: Origin of Evil" and "Annabelle Creation" both did. The strategy worked out quite well for both of those movies in terms of audience reaction, so The Purge franchise will try its luck with this by telling how this purge began. The idea here is that for one day a year, for the span of 12 hours, all crime becomes legal, which basically becomes an excuse for everyone to go kill each other, providing a gore fest for audiences. Because, you know, murder is the first crime you would think of if all crime became legal. Anyways, this premise has turned out to be quite fruitful for this franchise as each of the previous three films have opened around $30 million, while finishing around $70 million. "The Purge: Election Year" was predicted to experience a drop-off in 2016, but it wound up as the highest grossing film with $79 million, so who knows what "The First Purge" will do. Opening weekend comparisons might be tough with this being the first movie in the franchise to open on a Wednesday, but anywhere from $50-75 million overall seems likely here.

July 13th - 15th-

After being under-served for the majority of 2018, family audiences got rewarded big time in June with the arrival of "Incredibles 2" and now they will be rewarded again in July with Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation. The biggest thing that "Hotel Transylvania 3" has going against it is opening in the shadow of "Incredibles 2," which will still be going strong in theaters at this point. However, there's enough of a gap there that the two movies will probably be able to survive on their own. Much like the title suggests, this third movie has the gang moving away from the hotel of monsters for the time being in order to go on a summer vacation, which they will be spending on a monster cruise ship. The drama in the film surrounds the ship's captain Ericka, who sparks a quick romance with Dracula that's most likely too good to be true. Also like the movie's premise, the franchise takes a break from it's typical September opening that has been rather fruitful in order to try their luck in the summer. Thus the comparisons to the first two films might be a bit difficult, but those two movies both opened in the $40 million range while finishing around $150-170 million. So a safe prediction would be that "Hotel Transylvania 3" follows suit by hitting those same ranges.

The biggest story in July will be the amount of action movies being released. Arguably we've already had two at this point as "Ant-Man and the Wasp" and "The First Purge" both could be considered action films to a certain extent. But even in ignoring those two movies, we'll have three major action films opening in the final three weeks of July. The first of those three is Dwayne Johnson's Skyscraper. There's been a lot of comparisons that people have brought up here to the 1988 classic action film "Die Hard," which saw Bruce Willis as John McClane, an NYPD officer, trying to save his wife and others who were taken hostage by Alan Rickman's Hans Gruber at the Nakatomi Plaza in Los Angeles. "Skyscraper" sees Dwayne Johnson, a security guard, trying to save his family, who are trapped in a giant skyscraper in Hong Kong. The skyscraper is on fire and Dwayne Johnson has been framed for it. So he needs to escape capture in addition to trying to save his family. Thus the comparison to "Die Hard." In terms of the box office, it's a foolish thing to underestimate Dwyane Johnson. Recently he's led "Rampage," "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle" and "Central Intelligence" all to $35 million openings, thus that seems like a fair range for "Skyscraper" to also hit.

July 20th - 22nd-

A potential dark horse hit this summer could come this weekend with the musical Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again! Recent box office successes have proven that musicals are very much in fashion today. "Les Miserables" in 2012, "Into the Woods" in 2014, "La La Land" in 2016 and "The Greatest Showman" last year were all huge successes financially, earning over $125 million each at the domestic box office, with "The Greatest Showman" nearing $175 million, despite only opening to $8.8 million. That's a good sign for this "Mamma Mia!" sequel, meaning that it could be great counter-programming to all these giant blockbusters and action films. "Mamma Mia!" started out as a Broadway musical in 1999 and is a musical based on the songs of the popular group ABBA. The musical has been immensely popular as it had a 14-year run on Broadway and is still currently running in London's West End, making it one of the longest running musicals in both places. One could argue the movie adaptation in 2008 had more mixed reaction, but it still had an incredible box office run of $144 million after opening to $27 million. Musicals don't often get sequels, making "Here We Go Again!" a bit unique in that aspect, but a solid run of $100+ million should be expected.

Our second big action movie of the month is Denzel Washington's The Equalizer 2. Denzel has had a long, prestigious career in Hollywood with enormous box office success and lots of awards success, with eight acting nominations at the Oscars, which include two wins for his work in "Glory" and "Training Day." Despite all these accolades, "The Equalizer 2" will include a first for him. The first time he's ever done a sequel. That sounds strange, but if you glance over his filmography, it's true. And this sequel follows a very successful action film in 2014 in "The Equalizer," which surprised with a $34 million opening and $101 million overall. Both films are directed by Antoine Fuqua, who Denzel also teamed up with in "Training Day" and "The Magnificent Seven." In addition to being successful, "The Equalizer" was also a great crowd-pleaser and the type of action film where a sequel makes sense, with Denzel as an action star also making sense. Since 2000, Denzel has only had two wide releases that haven't hit at least $20 million on their opening weekend and that's out of a total of 18 movies. That suggests a lot of goodwill for this movie. The only thing working against this is the competition with "Skyscraper" the previous week and "Mission: Impossible - Fallout" the next week.

The final movie to talk about this weekend is the movie that might make the smallest dent out of the wide releases in July and that is Unfriended: Dark Web. This is a sequel to the 2015 movie "Unfriended," a movie you probably forgot existed. Even if you do remember it, it's probably not the movie you were expecting to get a sequel. However, it was actually decently received as it holds a positive 63 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and made $32 million domestically on a $1 million budget. That's an excellent profit for a movie its size and thus justifies the sequel. "Unfriended" is not to be confused with last year's "Friend Request," which was a horribly received movie that only made $3.8 million. The idea of "Unfriended" is that a group of online chat room friends found themselves haunted by a supernatural force using the account of their dead friend. "Unfriended: Dark Web" follows a similar premise with a teen coming into the possession of a new laptop with all sorts of dark videos present. Said teen and his group of friends start getting haunted by a force claiming to be the previous owner. An opening around the first movie's $15 million opening would be a success for this film. But even if it only opened to $5-10 million, that would still probably be good enough.

July 27th - 29th-

The final action movie of the month should be the biggest of the three major action movies and also could challenge "Ant-Man and the Wasp" for the biggest overall July release and that is Mission: Impossible - Fallout. The Mission: Impossible franchise began in 1966 with the original TV series that lasted seven seasons. It had a brief, yet unsuccessful revival for two seasons in the 1980's before finally being brought back to life in 1996 with this current film franchise starring Tom Cruise as Ethan Hunt. The first two movies had mixed reviews, but were major hits at the box office. The third movie also had lukewarm reviews, but was a bit of a dud at the box office as it's still the lowest grossing in the franchise, even when adjusted for ticket price inflation. It's the recent two movies that have really lit the franchise on fire as both "Ghost Protocol" and "Rogue Nation" did great at the box office and stand at an excellent 93 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Thus "Fallout" comes to theaters with a lot of excitement based on this goodwill from the previous two movies. "Fallout" also brings back "Rogue Nation" director Christopher McQuarrie, as well as most of the previous cast members while adding Henry Cavill to the mix, all of which should lead to the biggest opening yet for the franchise.

In case you thought there was only one superhero movie this month, we have a second one quietly sneaking in at the end of the month and that is the animated film Teen Titans Go! To the Movies. The Teen Titans have been around in the comics since 1964 as they first appeared in "The Brave and the Bold #54." At that point, they comprised of Kid Flash, Robin, Aqualad and shortly thereafter Wonder Girl. There's been many iterations of the Teen Titans since then, but this animated movie, which is actually the first theatrically released Teen Titans movie, is based on the animated series "Teen Titans Go!," which has been airing on Cartoon Network since 2013 and has had mixed reaction, but has nevertheless produced over 200 episodes as they recently began season 5, so they must be doing something right. This movie stars the original voice actors from the show voicing Beast Boy, Robin, Cyborg, Raven and Starfire, while adding Nicholas Cage as Superman (yes, that's finally happening), Will Arnett as Slade Wilson, Kristen Bell as Jade Wilson, Jimmy Kimmel as Batman, Halsey as Wonder Woman and Lil Yachty as Green Lantern. The plot is a bit meta as the Titans are trying to get their own movie made, but aren't taken seriously enough, so they find a nemesis in Slade Wilson to fight.