Movie Preview: September 2018

We're already one weekend into September with only four weekends to cover, so it's time to get this show on the road. We've hit the time of the year where things always slow down as Hollywood typically plans out their major releases in months not named August or September, thus making this the awkward spot in between the summer movie season and the holiday season. That said, Hollywood is learning more and more that big movies can be released in any month of the year as long as you have a well made film on your hands combined with an excellent marketing effort to get audiences excited. This past August was a good example of that as things looks very dreary heading into the month. Disney had "Christopher Robin," which was always going to play decently, but outside that and some July holdovers, it didn't seem like anything was set to break out. Yet "The Meg" and "Crazy Rich Asians" had other plans as both movies took August by storm, earning $112.3 million and $94.5 million respectively in August alone. Now the final tally of $848 million for August 2018 was nothing close to record-breaking, but it's a decent total considering how bleak things looked. September 2018 is already off to an excellent start, so let's not waste any time in jumping in.

September 7th - 9th-

Last year on this exact weekend, the horror phenomenon "IT" took the world by storm as it opened to $123.4 million, shattering all sorts of records, including the September opening weekend record, which was previously held by "Hotel Transylvania 2" with $48.5 million. This gave Warner Bros. an excellent idea as they set out to see if they could catch lightning in a bottle twice as they scheduled the latest in The Conjuring franchise, The Nun, for this post Labor Day weekend. Sure, "The Nun" didn't come anywhere close to "IT," but it was another major win for Warner Bros. as it opened to the second highest opening weekend of September with $53.8 million, which is also a total higher than any previous film in The Conjuring franchise, with the record previously belonging to the original film with $41.9 million. An extremely effective marketing campaign as well as good will from the franchise as a whole is what led to this monster opening. The movie tells the origins of the creepy Nun character that showed up in "The Conjuring 2," which turned out to be a good enough tease to support a solo movie adventure. With a reported production budget of just $22 million, the $53.8 million domestic opening is a huge win for Warner Bros.

The biggest question for "The Nun" will be its long-term potential. On one hand, you could point out the fact that this is the beginning of the Halloween season. A full two months in theaters leading up to Halloween could prove very fruitful, as was the case with "IT" last year. However, despite having excellent totals for its opening weekend, what "The Nun" doesn't have is positive reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes, critics were brutal with the film, giving it a 26 percent score, the worst score in the franchise, below the first "Annabelle," which got a 29 percent score. Audiences weren't much better as they gave it a 49 percent on the audience side of Rotten Tomatoes as well as a C cinemascore from opening day audiences. This leads one to believe that a front loaded showing is probably in the cards. Looking at "Annabelle," that only had a 2.27 multiplier. If "The Nun" falls in line there, a final total of around $120 million domestically would be where it ends up, meaning it would fall short of the $137.4 million total of "The Conjuring," which remains the best domestic total in the franchise. But still, a $120 million total most likely means more Nun movies will be on the way.

The news wasn't quite as positive for our other two wide releases, led by Jennifer Garner's revenge-thriller Peppermint, which barely edged out "Crazy Rich Asians" for second place with $13.4 million when weekend actuals were released. The movie saw Garner back in an action role, which is the type of role where she made a name for herself in the early 2000's with the likes of "Alias" and "Elektra." In "Peppermint," Garner stars as a woman whose family gets killed and she eventually decides to take justice into her own hands when the police's work on the case doesn't satisfy her. In terms of reaction, critics were even harsher on this movie than "The Nun," giving it a 13 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Although, unlike "The Nun," audiences seemed more on board with this, giving it an 82 percent audience score as well as a respectable B+ cinemascore, so there's an outside chance that this holds on fairly decently. A comparable title might be last September's "American Assassin," which opened to $14.8 million and wound up with $36.2 million, a 2.45 multiplier. A similar multiplier for "Peppermint" would allow the movie to sneak past $30 million total and possibly come close to $40 million if word of mouth is decent enough to overcome the critical beating it's taking.

Debuting outside the top 10 this weekend was God Bless the Broken Road, which could only muster up $1.39 million from 1,272 theaters. This puts the movie in identical territory as, well, "The Identical," another movie from distributor Freestyle Releasing, which debuted to $1.59 million in September 2014. "The Identical" ended with just $2.8 million, which might be where "God Bless the Broken Road" will end up as there's a long list of smaller Christian films that opened in this million dollar range that quickly disappeared from theaters. "God Bless the Broken Road" comes from the director of "God's Not Dead" and "God's Not Dead 2" and is about a woman trying to get back on the road of faith after the passing of her husband put her on a bit of a rocky path. She also meets a race car driver to potentially help her out.

September 14th - 16th-

We now break away from analyzing the recent past in order to move forward with our usual business in previewing the near future and that will begin with one of Hollywood's current favorite things to do in bringing back an 80's franchise as The Predator debuts. Yes, it's true that only one movie from this franchise is from the 80's, but it could be argued that the 1987 "Predator" is really the only one most people care about. Critic-wise, "Predator" stands at a certified fresh 80 percent, "Predator 2" is at a dismal 28 percent, which seems good compared to the 20 percent and 11 percent of the two "Alien vs. Predator" movies. Then we have the 2010 reboot "Predators" which looks epic comparatively at 65 percent. So why does Hollywood keep trying? That's an excellent question, but they've been stubborn with both this and the Alien franchise even though they probably should've given up long ago. "The Predator" does have Shane Black attached to direct, which might excite some, but early reviews are mediocre, coming in like with 2010's "Predators" at the moment with 63 percent, thus warranting a potential box office comparison as well. On that note, "Predators" opened to $24.8 million. Or it could act more like "Alien: Covenant," which opened to $36.2 million.

The early to mid September thriller seems to be a popular thing recently and that will continue this month with A Simple Favor debuting in around 3,000 theaters. While there's no good comparison to last September, the previous three years all had at least one major thriller that will be in the same ball park as "A Simple Favor," with "No Good Deed" opening to $24.2 million in September 2014, "The Perfect Guy" opening to $25.9 million in September 2015, "The Visit" opening to $25.4 million also in September 2015, and "When the Bough Breaks" opening to $14.2 million in September 2016. "A Simple Favor" stars Anna Kendrick trying to uncover the truth about her best friend's disappearance, with said friend being played by Blake Lively. The movie is directed by Paul Feig, who usually is directing comedies like "Bridesmaids," "The Heat," "Spy" and "Ghostbusters" as opposed to thrillers, so looking at his filmography is probably not the best comparison here. In a perfect world for this film, this would hit the mid $20 million range like the aforementioned thrillers from 2014 and 2015, thus potentially trying to play spoiler if "The Predator" fails, but "When the Bough Breaks" is probably a better comparison as this will probably come in somewhere in the low teens.

Attempting to challenge "A Simple Favor" for what will most likely be the third spot, as "The Nun" will likely come in second with around $20 million, is our latest drug cartel movie White Boy Rick. This sort of premise has become quite popular recently, both on the big screen and the small screen. In the TV/Netflix series world, we have shows like "Breaking Bad," "Ozark" and "Narcos" that have done quite well. On the big screen, we have both "Sicario" movies as well as the best comparison to "White Boy Rick" in "American Made," which came out last September and was also a true story about a normal person who got involved in the drug business due to the potential of earning money. "White Boy Rick" tells the story of a teenage white boy named Rick who got heavily involved in the drug business before he turned 16. On that note, "American Made" opened to $16.8 million last September, a total which would win "White Boy Rick" third place if it accomplished that. However, the biggest difference between the two movies is the theater count as "White Boy Rick" will be debuting in around 2,400 theaters as opposed to 3,100. "American Made" also had the star power of Tom Cruise and a major studio in Universal pushing it, neither of which "White Boy Rick" has.

The final film opening this weekend is another smaller Christian film, Unbroken: Path to Redemption. This comes via Pure Flix, who distributed "Samson," "God's Not Dead: A Light in Darkness" and "Death of a Nation" this year so far, all of which opened below $3 million. In fact, Pure Flix's biggest opening weekend is "God's Not Dead 2" with $7.6 million and "Woodlawn" with $4 million. "Path to Redemption" has the chance to be on the higher end of that spectrum given the "Unbroken" connection. While it may not be completely appropriate to call this a sequel to "Unbroken," given that this is a completely different cast and crew than the original movie, "Path to Redemption" tells the rest of the story that the original film left out. In regards to Laura Hillenbrand's best-selling book based on the life of Louis Zamperini, an Olympian turned World War II prisoner, the book had three major sections: before the war, during the war, and after the war. "Unbroken" told the first two sections of that story, leaving the final third of the book to be summarized in a couple of sentences at the end. "Path to Redemption" attempts to do justice to that final act by focusing their movie on the events of Zamperini's life when he got home, which was a big reason for the book's success.

September 21st - 23rd-

The third weekend of September only has one major film that seems poised to top the box office and that is the family friendly Halloween flick The House with a Clock in Its Walls. This is based on the 1973 children's mystery novel of the same name by John Bellairs and is actually the first book in a 12-book series that features the lead character Lewis Barnavelt, the main kid in the series. The most recent book came out in 2008 and is titled "The Sign of the Sinister Sorcerer." The Halloween season always provides adults and teens with plenty of options and this year is no different with "The Nun," "Hell Fest" and "Halloween," but the family audience doesn't always get proper attention at Halloween, which is why this movie has a decent advantage at the box office, although it will actually have direct competition come October with "Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween," meaning families will have options to choose from this Halloween season, which is an even rarer case. Jack Black and Cate Blanchett are set to star, giving this an even bigger advantage, with Owen Vaccaro set to play the main kid Lewis Barnavelt. The most curious element here is director Eli Roth, who has only done gruesome R-rated movies before this, so we'll see how he translates to doing a kids movie.

While "House with a Clock" is the only major film being released this week, there are two smaller films set for wide release and the most notable of those two is Fahrenheit 11/9, the latest political documentary from Michael Moore. Back in 2004, "Fahrenheit 9/11" was Michael Moore's radical political documentary that tried to show how awful President Bush was in hopes to get him to lose the election that year. It failed in that goal as President Bush won a second term. But in the process "Fahrenheit 9/11" made an astounding $119.2 million, which is the highest grossing documentary by a large margin. Now in 2018, 14 years after "Fahrenheit 9/11," Michael Moore has flipped around the title with his anti-Trump documentary, which is exactly what "Fahrenheit 11/9" is. In terms of the box office, ain't no way this is getting close to "Fahrenheit 9/11," which opened to $23.9 million on it's way to that $119.2 million. Rather, a look at fellow political radical Dinesh D'Souza could clue us in, even though D'Souza is literally on the exact opposite side of the political spectrum. Nonetheless, "2016: Obama's America" opened to $6.5 million in 2012 while "Hillary's America" opened to $3.9 million in 2016. Somewhere in that ball park would probably be where this lands.

And finally, Amazon Studios will be delivering Life Itself into theaters following its premier at the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this month. "Life Itself" is a multi-generational drama diving into all of the twists and turns that life throws at people as it follows Oscar Isaac and Olivia Wilde as a couple who go from college romance to marriage to the birth of their first child and potentially more. In addition to Isaac and Wilde, Annette Bening, Mandy Patinkin, Olivia Cooke, Antonio Banderas, Samuel L. Jackson among others. The problem, though, with this type of movie is that in order to make a true dent in the box office coming out of TIFF, you need to have a lot of buzz following your premier and that's not something that "Life Itself" got at all. In fact, out of nine reviews out on Rotten Tomatoes, eight of them are rotten, giving this an early score of 11 percent. Yes, that's a very early sample size and it's possible that general audiences are a lot less bitter towards this, but that reaction comes as a bit of a red flag, meaning this movie might be the type of movie that flies under everyone's radars and makes little impact when it comes to the box office.

September 28th - 30th-

The final weekend of September might be a bit of a tossup when it comes to who is going to wind up on top, but for now I'll give the edge to Warner Animation Group's Smallfoot. This is a movie that attempts a bit of a comedic role reversal that aims to amuse the younger audience. Usually in real life we have the humans hunting out the mythical Big Foot creatures. But in this movie, it's the Big Foot creatures, or Yeti in this instance, who believe that the humans, the "Smallfoot" are the more mythical creatures. Most of the Yeti don't believe they exist, but one Yeti is out to prove that they actually do because he thinks he saw one. Get it? It's funny! Although in all seriousness, if this pleases the younger crowd, then it's done its job. Although the challenge here for WAG is that they're not quite on the level of a Disney or Pixar when it comes to their animated movies, especially not outside their "LEGO Movie" franchise. As mentioned in the previous weekend, we also have "House with a Clock" and "Goosebumps 2" coming out this Halloween season and given that "Smallfoot" doesn't really have the Halloween connection, it could be the one at the disadvantage here. Fellow WAG film "Storks" might be the best comparison as that opened to $21.3 million in September 2016.

The biggest competition for "Smallfoot" will be Night School, a movie that has been trending upwards. The movie stars Kevin Hart as someone who is forced to attend night school in hopes to pass the GED to finish high school. Tiffany Haddish, star of "Girls Trip," plays the role of his teacher that is working to whip him into shape. And of course all of them end up getting into some sort of trouble in order to up the ante for the comedy in the movie. Now there's plenty of comedies to look at from this year for comparison. We have "Blockers," which opened to $20.6 million, "Life of the Party" with $17.9 million, "Game Night" with $17 million, and "Tag" with $14.9 million. "Night School" could slip into that range in the mid- to upper-teens, but the star power of Hart and Haddish could prove explosive, especially if the movie connects with audiences. "Girl's Trip," starring Haddish, surprised last year with $31.2 million while Hart helped power "Central Intelligence" to a $35.5 million opening in 2016. "Night School" also has a lighter PG-13 rating, which means it could have an appeal with teens and adults alike, which is something that greatly helped "Central Intelligence." So don't be surprised if this ends up winning the weekend.

The Halloween season continues to roll on as we get closer to the holiday in October and that leads us to our second major adult horror film of the season, if we're counting "The Nun" as the first and that is Hell Fest. This will act as more of an original horror, which should put it at a disadvantage when compared to "The Nun" and "Halloween," both of which have a large built-in fan base going in, especially the 40-year run of the "Halloween" franchise. "Hell Fest" is going to try to start from scratch and gain its own fan base, which will largely be determined by the quality of the movie itself. The premise surrounds a Halloween theme park that has a costumed killer walking out picking park attendants off one by one as said park attendants are initially unsure of whether being chased by this killer is a part of the experience or is actually a deadly situation where their lives are in danger. The film is going for an 80's slasher vibe, which could work out well as 80's nostalgia is a huge thing in our society right now. But if reaction to the movie isn't very positive, horror fans will most likely choose to save their money for "Halloween." Chances are that the production budget with this wasn't very high, so either way it probably won't take a whole lot for this to turn out a profit.

The final film of the month is the, wait for it, seventh film adaptation of the classic novel Little Women. There were two silent films in 1917 and 1918 as well as major adaptations in 1933 by George Cukor, 1949 by Mervyn LeRoy, 1978 by David Lowell Rich and 1994 by Gillian Armstrong. There have been six television series made, four by BBC in 1950, 1958, 1970 and 2017 as well as two Japanese anime series in the 1980's. There was a Broadway musical that began in 2005 and an American Opera version that began in 1998. And if that's not enough, there's another film adaptation coming in December 2019 by Oscar-nominated director Greta Gerwig of "Lady Bird" fame, which is set to star Timothee Chalamet, Emma Watson, Saoirse Ronan, Meryl Streep and Laura Dern. This 2018 version, though, was made to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Louisa May Alcott's classic novel and will be directed Clare Niederpruem in her feature-length directorial debut. The main star is Lea Thompson. The rest of the cast consists of a lot of people that general audiences probably don't know too well. And the distributor here is brand new. So there's all kinds of red flags here as a lot of people might now know this version even exists, which might lead to small box office returns.