After a mostly quiet February followed a mostly quiet January, we now look forward to March, which… looks to continue this trend of mostly quiet months to start 2025. In defense of February, it was a solid month for horror fans with “Companion” (released on the final day of January), “Heart Eyes” and “The Monkey” doing decent business based on their budgets and getting mostly positive reactions from those who went out. And we did have a Captain America movie get released, if you didn’t get that news. Sam Wilson’s first run as Captain America performed decently based on expectations, despite mixed reaction, and is looking to sneak past $200 million domestically, or get awfully close to it. But when that’s your only movie that made more than $100 million during the month, and January’s “Dog Man” is the only other movie to even cross $50 million during February, that’s not the greatest look for the domestic box office as a whole.
That said, the biggest story of the month didn’t come here at the domestic box office. Aligned with the Chinese New Year, “Ne Zha 2” has shattered all sorts of records over in China and across the globe, becoming the highest grossing animated movie ever at the worldwide box office, having made over $1.8 billion as of me typing this, most of that in China alone. And that could even be higher, given that international box office reports can be a bit spotty and delayed. It’s quickly closing in on becoming one of the top five highest grossing movies ever worldwide. So this has to be the story of 2025 so far when it comes to the movie industry.
Coming back over to the states, in past years, March has often been the month when the box office really has started to kick into gear, even to the point of seeming like an early preview to the summer movie season. But this March will instead be filled with a bunch of low to medium budgeted movies that will look to attract film lovers, but aren’t expected to have massive mainstream success. The one exception is the much talked about remake of “Snow White” that Disney has on the schedule. Can Disney survive the massive wave of toxic online reaction to deliver on the month’s one attempted blockbuster? There will be plenty to talk about on that front. But even if the box office outlook isn’t so bright this month, the quantity of releases is actually quite large, with three of the four weekends having five new releases each, so let’s get down to business and explore!
As always, release date information for this post is courtesy of the-numbers.com and boxofficepro.com. The movies listed are the ones currently scheduled for a wide release in the United States and Canada and are always subject to change.
March 7 – 9
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| Warner Bros.' "Mickey 17" |
We start the month off by going into the sci-fi world of Bong Joon Ho with his latest movie Mickey 17. Bong Joon Ho is a director who took the world by storm when his movie “Parasite” from 2019 went onto win best picture at the Oscars. Ever since then he has been working on this unknown sci-fi project with Robert Pattinson in the lead role that has had its release date postponed several times now. It was once thought to be a big Oscar player, given “Parasite,” but now that its release is finally upon us, it looks to be more along the lines of Bong Joon Ho’s 2013 movie, “Snowpiercer,” which was a dystopian sci-fi flick that was very much a crowd pleaser, even if it wasn’t an awards film. And the March release seems to be reflective of Warner Bros. thinking along those lines as well. In “Mickey 17,” Robert Pattinson plays a character named Mickey Barnes who signs up to be an “expendable,” someone who goes on a dangerous journey and dies over and over, but is capable of being brought back, with each death helping them learn more about what’s going on. The challenge arises when one of the versions of himself doesn’t die and there thus exists multiples of himself. The movie has had positive reviews so far, which should bode well for it, but it’s nevertheless currently projected to open around $10-15 million, which still might be good enough for No. 1 this weekend. The final weekend of February had Captain America win the weekend with $14.8 million, so the bar for No. 1 isn’t particularly high and “Mickey 17” is the only major wide release.
Yes, “Mickey 17” is the only new major wide release, as it is opening in over 3,800 theaters. But there are a handful of moderate releases that are also entering the market and will be fighting for a spot in the top 10. And while it’s theater count is currently unconfirmed, the next movie I’ll bring up is In the Lost Lands, given that it seems to be the next highest profile release. At least on paper with the cast and crew. The movie is based on a short story written by George R. R. Martin, author of “Game of Thrones.” It was included in the 1982 book “Amazons II,” which was a collection of short stories in the fantasy realm featuring female protagonists. The general premise here is about a queen who sends the powerful witch Gray Alys into the “Lost Lands” to give her the gift of turning into a werewolf. The journey is a dangerous one that has her fighting man, demon, and creature along the way. And the advertising has focused heavily on this being based a story by George R. R. Martin, with Dave Bautista and Milla Jovovich as the lead cast members, possibly because the actual director is Paul W. S. Anderson, who has a very poor record when it comes to his filmography. And if it seems like the distributor here doesn’t have a ton of faith in this movie, based on the buzz being very quiet in the days leading up to the release and the actual release being much smaller than it initially seemed, despite it having a budget of at least $55 million, that’s because they probably don’t. And when you see the movie’s early Rotten Tomatoes score of 17 percent, it all makes sense. And again, with Paul W. S. Anderson on board, that’s probably not a surprise. This will probably end up being one of the big early failures of 2025 that might not even get talked about much.
The movie that might actually end up ahead of “In the Lost Lands” is the recent movie by Angel Studios, Rules Breakers. It seems like I’ve brought up an Angel Studios movie quite often in these monthly posts. They’ve been remarkably consistent, both in terms of the quantity of releases as well as how much money those movies have made. They’ve now had 10 movies released starting in 2023 and moving into 2025. Of those 10, seven of them have made between $10-20 million total domestically, usually opening between $5-8 million, give or take a bit. Their most recent movie was “Brave the Dark,” which opened at the end of January, and that opened on the lower end of the Angel Studios spectrum with $2.3 million. In regards to “Rule Breakers,” this tells the story of Afghanistan’s first competitive robotics team, spearheaded by a group of schoolgirls whose home country sees it as a rebellion to educate girls. But, you know, as the title says, some rules are meant to be broken, right? The movie is being released in 2,044 theaters and has a decent 71 percent Rotten Tomatoes score from the handful of reviews that currently exist.
Going a tier smaller on the scale and release count, we also see the opening of the animated movie Night of the Zoopocalypse, which is opening in 1,400 theaters and is about a meteor that unleashes a virus that turns zoo animals into zombies. A group of surviving animals lead a team to stop the virus and rescue the zoo. The attempt here to create a fun and spooky movie that is appropriate for young kids, and from the even smaller handful of reviews that exist, it seems like it’s a movie that will be effective in its goal to please the target audience. The first 12 reviews counted have all scored the movie as positive, giving it an early 100 percent score. The average score of those 12 reviews is a 7 out of 10, so it’s not like the claims are that its excellent or ground breaking, but simply a fun movie for kids. It doesn’t come from a major animation studio, which unfortunately means that lack of branding hurts it when it comes to getting the attention of its target audience like a Disney or DreamWorks would naturally do. That means it could be the type of release that has a minimal theatrical run, but finds a life down the road on streaming when it can be played at home.
The final movie of the weekend also doesn’t have a confirmed theater count and is the one that I’m the least confident in being very wide at all and that’s Queen of the Ring. I only say that because, after it being unlisted in the theater count report by the-numbers.com, I searched my local market and it’s only around in a couple of theaters. That means it does exist, but might only be in a couple of hundred as opposed to a thousand or more. Not that the movie itself is less important. In fact, to a certain degree in falls in line with “Rule Breakers” in being a movie about women paving the way and making history. This one specifically is about a single mother from a small town who gets into pro wrestling in a time where that was illegal for women in the United States. She goes onto become the first million dollar female athlete in history. Her name is Mildred Burke and she’s played by Emily Bett Rickards in the movie, who is probably most notable for playing Felicity Smoak in the TV series “Arrow.”
March 14 – 16
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| Paramount's "Novocaine" |
The first weekend of March has five new releases and is likely to be led by a movie that’s expected to open between $10-15 million. The second weekend of march also has five new releases and is likely to be led by a movie that’s expected to open between $10-15 million. Again, not the best start to the box office in a month that’s often bigger for the box office. Anyways, the movie leading off this weekend is Novocaine, which continues a fun start to the year for Jack Quaid. He recently starred in the thriller “Companion” that opened on the last day of January. That movie only opened to $9.3 million and disappeared from theaters rather fast, but it was received well and it seemed like he was having a lot of fun during the movie. And now he gets to play a character in “Novocaine” who can’t feel physical pain, but turns that into an advantage when his girlfriend gets kidnapped and he decides to hunt the people down who took her. It seems like a potentially fun action comedy to entertain audiences. That opening for “Companion” could also be a gauge for how well this movie does. It’s quite feasible that “Novocaine” ends up opening around the realm. Paramount is the distributor here and it’s estimated that they’re opening the movie in around 3,200 theaters, which is also about what “Companion” got. If “Novocaine” does end up on the lower end of things, this could turn out to be an interest race at the box office between a handful of smaller budgeted films. Whichever movie hits $10 million wins?
The main competition in regards to a new release comes from director Steven Soderbergh with Black Bag, which is his second movie of the year. This is estimated to be released in about 2,500 theaters, so “Novocaine” has the edge in theater count. And I guess we’ll see what “Mickey 17” ends up doing on its first weekend in order to determine where it’s going to end up in its second weekend. But “Black Bag” is a spy thriller from Soderbergh, starring Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender, so it has the star power to work. In the movie, Blanchett and Fassbender play a married couple wherein both are intelligence agents. When one of them is suspected of betraying the nation, the other is faced with the moral quandary of whether to be loyal to their country or to their marriage. Early reaction is out and so far it’s quite strong, sitting at a 96 percent with 24 reviews counted. Reviews for “Novocaine” haven’t yet come out as of me typing this. And if you’re curious, Soderbergh’s other movie was the supernatural horror film “Presence,” which opened to $3.3 million in late January. Focus Features is probably hoping for this movie to do slightly more than that, but oddly enough it’s been since “Magic Mike” in 20212 that Soderbergh had a movie opened above $10 million, although several of his recent movies went straight to streaming, so that’s a partial explanation there. $5-8 million is his typical range, although “Black Bag” does seem more mainstream as opposed to some of his more experimental stuff.
Last month while writing my February movie preview, I was literally in the middle of my Looney Tunes deep dive when the news broke that the latest Looney Tunes had moved away from February and into March. That’s why I always make sure to include in the intro that the release dates are subject to change at any moment. Anyways, barring another last minute delay, we’ll have a new Looney Tunes movie released in theaters this month and that is The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Adventure. Now the long story short when it comes to my Looney Tunes deep dive is that they’ve been around for a long time and are still going strong in regards to producing content. Plenty of ups and downs along the way, but they’ve still managed to consistently be there. Despite this long and stories history, they’ve actually not had many theatrical adventures. They’re usually a TV or streaming thing. Outside the two Space Jam movies, the only other theatrical Looney Tunes movie was the 2003 film “Looney Tunes: Back in Action,” which didn’t do particularly well. So there’s not a whole lot of precedence to look at here. “The Day the Earth Blew Up” was initially slated to be an HBO Max release release, but got thrown back into production and shopped around, and eventually the decision was made to put it into theaters. Last year the North American distribution rights were acquired by Ketchup Entertainment. The movie also had a couple of film festival releases in 2024, as well as getting an Oscar qualifying run in December, so it has been seen and the response has been generally positive, but not necessarily glowing. Daffy Duck and Porky Pig are the stars of the show and they’re doing Looney Tunes stuff while discovering secret alien plots and saving the world.
Easter isn’t until April 20 this year, but we get an early start on it with the Christian film The Last Supper. This is a lower budged film directed by Mauro Borrelli and starring Jamie Ward as Jesus, that of course tells the story of the last days of Christ’s life. And certainly nothing wrong with that. Although the timing here is a bit curious. And maybe it’s an unfortunate case of really bad timing, but this is released just two weeks ahead of Season 5 of “The Chosen,” which has become a really popular show among Christian audiences. Season 5 of “The Chosen” is going with the same strategy as Season 4, releasing the entire season in theaters in three parts. And they’re focus on Season 5 is… the Last Supper. It’s even what they’ve subtitled the season as. Maybe some Christian audiences will enjoy double dipping here and watching both. But I’m guessing that, for better or for worse, “The Chosen” is going to steal this little movie’s thunder.
And finally on this weekend we go to the realm of A24 with the movie Opus. This is a movie that came out of Sundance this year, written and directed by Mark Anthony Green in his directorial debut, and is a horror/thriller starring John Malkovich playing an iconic pop star who returns after decades of being gone from the public eye. Ayo Edibiri plays a reporter covering his return and gets invited to come to an exclusive listening experience of his new album, only to seemingly figure out, based on the trailers, that he might be some sort of crazy cult leader instead. Now A24 is not the type of studio that shies away from something different, unconventional, or controversial, especially when it comes to the horror/thriller genres. But this one hasn’t exactly gotten off on the right foot so far with its Sundance crowds. Some positive reviews, but most of the reactions have leaned negative as its currently sitting in the 30 percent realm on Rotten Tomatoes. And that could put it in danger of being dead on arrival. A24 has been releasing more movies directly into wide release as of late, but I’m guessing this might be one where they give it a smaller or moderate release and see how the general public reacts before committing to a release that’s bigger.
March 21 – 23
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| Disney's "Snow White" |
And here’s the big one this month. The first two weekends both have a high quantity of releases, yet not much in terms of breakout potential that often defines this month. But the one attempted blockbuster of the month comes via Disney with their remake of Snow White, the latest in a long string of live-action remakes of their old animated classics. And boy have they managed to swing the bat right into the hornets nest with this one, with online reaction that has reached the point of safely being labeled as toxic. And if you need proof, feel free to head over to their main trailer on YouTube and hunt through the comment section. Or find any post on sites like Twitter or Reddit that discuss the movie. The temperature in the room here isn’t the least bit positive. This stems from a string of disappointments with these remakes, many of which have been seen or labeled as empty cash grabs with little emotion or effort. But in this case there was heavy controversy of what they were planning on doing with the seven dwarfs, which caused Disney to completely take a different turn with them, although that didn’t make things a whole lot better when the trailer was released and it was revealed that Disney went with CGI dwarfs instead. Adding onto that, some aren’t happy with the idea of Snow White being played Rachel Zegler, who was born in America, but is of Colombian and Polish descent. Some don’t like the idea that Snow White’s skin color isn’t as “white as snow” or claim she’s not as attractive as Gal Gadot, who plays the evil queen. Or they don’t like her comments calling the original movie dated, with a weird romance involving a prince that stalks her. And all that is just scratching the surface.
Here’s the thing, though. If you’re a parent with kids, has your five-year-old ever read through Twitter comments about Rachel Zegler? Do they care about YouTube comments or even know what Reddit is? Probably not. Yes, the parents are buying the tickets and it’s quite possible that the massive wave of controversial and negativity could bury the movie or cause many to wait for Disney+, especially if actual reviews come out as negative. But it’s also possible that there’s simply just two different universes here. And the universe that the target audience lives in is a completely different one than people from the internet leaving angry and ugly comments. And thus it’s very possible that this movie succeeds and soars despite all of this because the main target audience simply doesn’t care what others say. And that’s why Disney often reacts to box office results as opposed to internet reaction. And there latest exploration of this remake realm came with December’s “Mufasa,” which only opened to $35.4 million domestically, but has legged it out to $248.8 million so far and counting. Box Office Pro, in their long term forecast, initially put “Snow White” as to opening in the $50 million range. Their recent update, though, coming after more and more negative buzz, bumped it up to the $60-70 million range for its opening. That would put it in the realm of Disney’s 2015 remake of “Cinderella” ($67.9 million) or “Maleficent” ($69.4 million). Granted, those movies were released a decade ago now, but that still appears to be not outside the realm of possibilities. Disney has proven many times to be successful despite less than enthusiastic response. Which is why we’re continuing to see this trend from them. A lower opening closer to $30 million wouldn’t surprise me. There’s plenty of variables in play here. But it seems like a higher opening is still quite possible.
There is technically some competition here for Disney, although I personally don’t have a whole lot of faith in the performance of Warner Bros.’s The Alto Knights. The advertising here makes it seem like it’s a big Scorsese film as they’ve been pushing that it’s from the “hitmakers” of “Goodfellas,” “The Irishman,” and “Bugsy.” The actual director here is Barry Levinson, who did direct the latter movie on that list, “Bugsy.” But that was way back in 1991. He had a good run leading up to that with “Good Morning, Vietman” and “Rainman,” but hasn’t done a whole lot of note since then. The connection to “Goodfellas” and “The Irishman” comes via Nicholas Pileggi, who helped Scorsese write “Goodfellas” and was a producer on “The Irishman.” The “hitmaker” there could also be referring to Robert De Niro, who acted in “Goodfellas” and “The Irishman,” so there’s a little bit of a nostalgic throwback here. De Niro plays not just one mob boss here, but two mob bosses in Vito Genovese and Frank Costello. This is actually not the first or the second time we’ve had an actor in a dual role this year. “The Monkey” and “Mickey 17” both did that. Plus “Sonic 3” at the end of last year. Anyways, Genovese and Costello were real life mob bosses, so there might be some that bite on the nostalgic appeal here for a retro crime thriller with De Niro, but the overall prognosis isn’t too incredibly high.
The final movie listed as a wide release on the schedule is the sci-fi horror film Ash. This is about a woman who wakes up on a distant planet and finds the crew of her space station viciously killed. The movie stars Eiza Gonzalez and Aaron Paul, and is directed by Flying Lotus, who is prominently known as a rapper and record producer, but has delved into quite the variety of things. He’s done film and TV scores, has acted a few times (including having a minor role in this movie), and has directed a few shorts, one of the segments in “V/H/S/99,” and the movie “Kuso” in 2017, which was his only other feature length directorial effort. The movie is being distributed by RLJ Entertainment. Their highest grossing release is the 2018 movie “Mandy,” which made $1.2 million total, opening in 75 theaters to $225,723. So “Ash” is not likely to be a huge release. But, coincidentally, if you look at the posters for “Ash” and “Mandy,” they look fairly similar. Or at least have a similar pink and reddish color scheme.
March 28 – 30
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| Amazon MGM's "A Working Man" |
The final weekend of March is likely to be lead by “Snow White” again, depending on how much it actually opens to and what the word of mouth is from its target audience. But this weekend does have a handful of mid-budgeted releases that will be added to the market. And the safest bet to lead the way is A Working Man, which is an action movie directed by David Ayer and starring Jason Statham. The movie has Statham leaving his prior life behind to go work in construction, in an attempt to have a more “normal” life with his family. But then his boss’s daughter goes missing and he is forced to re-employ his former black ops skills to go hunt her down. And if that sounds vaguely familiar as a premise, outside it being the basic premise of just about every action movie these days, it’s because David Ayer and Jason Statham also did last year’s action movie “The Beekeeper.” This year’s movie is Statham as a construction worker instead of beekeeper, but outside that it looks like it’s kinda the same movie. But hey, if you need your kick of Jason Statham action movie, here this movie is. “The Beekeeper” did quite well last year, opening to $16.6 million, making $66.2 million total domestically, and over $150 million worldwide. Not bad for a mid-budgeted action film. If “A Working Man” can follow in that movie’s footsteps, that would be a success. “The Beekeeper” was also received quite well by audiences, so that helps as well.
If you’re aware of A24 and how weird and unconventional their movies often are, and you’ve often enjoyed that journey, then they definitely have a movie for you this weekend with Death of a Unicorn. Yes, this is a real movie coming out that is about a father and daughter, played by Paul Rudd and Jenna Ortega, who hit a unicorn with their car on the way to a work retreat. They bring the unicorn with them and their boss gets all sorts of ideas of what to do with it. But that’s of course all a very bad idea because the unicorn’s mate is now out for revenge. So if you’ve ever wanted to watch a horror comedy about a killer unicorn running around killing people, you now have your wish! The movie will be getting released at the South by Southwest Film Festival at the beginning of the month (March 8), so by the time it’s general release rolls around, we’ll have an idea of what the reaction to the movie is, and that’ll determine how much breakout potential it has. Fellow silly horror comedy in “The Monkey” last month opened to just over $14 million from 3,200 theaters, and it does seem like A24 will be pushing this immediately into a wide release as opposed to a slower roll-out. Their biggest opening now is last year’s “Civil War,” which opened to $25.5 million, but they also opened “Heretic” to $10.8 million in November. Both of those also opened in over 3,000 theaters.
Going from horror comedy to supernatural horror, Universal will be releasing The Woman in the Yard, which also comes from Blumhouse, a production company that has had lots of success with low-budget horror films. As described by Universal, the movie is about a woman shrouded in black appears on a family’s front lawn and warns them that “today’s the day.” The mother of this family is played by Danielle Deadwyler, and she’s a woman who is crippled in grief after surviving a car accident that killed her husband. So in a way that gives the movie vibes of “The Babadook,” and is also just a PG-13 rating, which might give it a more broad appeal as compared to the very R-rated “Death of a Unicorn” that it’s competing with. Both movies opening on the same weekend have the potential to cannibalize each other a bit, or have one dominate the other. So reviews and audience reaction might be key to seeing which one of these comes out on top. Box Office Pro has pegged both of them in the $8-12 million in their recent long range forecast. But it’s also possible that they both do well and it’s a good weekend for horror fans. “The Woman in the Yard” is directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, who did a handful of Liam Neeson action movies last decade, but also directed 2009’s “Orphan” as well as 2016’s “The Shallows,” so he does have experience in the horror realm. He also directed both “Jungle Cruise” and “Black Adam,” but those are less relevant to this current conversation.
A double dose of horror with some Jason Statham action this weekend will also be joined by the debut of Season 5 of “The Chosen.” This weekend’s event is labeled as The Chosen: Last Supper – Part 1. As mentioned earlier this post, “The Chosen” has become quite the popular TV series among Christian audiences, following the life of Christ. What began as an audience-funded project has expanded in popularity quite a bit, to the point where they started putting it in theaters, with events here and there. Last year with Season 4 was the first year where they released the entire season into theaters, split into three parts. All three parts combined for a total of $31.6 million, which very well may have funded the entire Season 5 on its own. And that’s not counting all of their other revenue sources from its continued crowd funding and whatever they get back from the different streaming services they’ve licensed the show out to. So they’ve done quite well. Season 4 ended with Jesus and his disciples riding into Jerusalem and Season 5 will begin with the Triumphal Entry and portray most of the final week of Christ’s life. The current plan is for Season 6 to portray the final day, with the series concluding with Season 7 portraying the resurrection. Part 1 here of Season 5 is Episodes 1 and 2. And it actually debuts on Thursday, March 27. Part 2 will open on April 3 and then it will conclude with Part 3 on April 10. Parts 2 and 3 will have three episodes each, for eight episodes total. $5-8 million is about what each part opened to last year, give or take a bit.
And we finish this month talking about the Indian film Sikander. There’s a lot of these Indian action films that come out and I sometimes talk about them because I sometimes know about them. They have a habit of sometimes showing up unannounced, which can make them hard to preview and prognosticate, otherwise I would talk about them more. I can’t bring them up if I don’t know about them when I type this post. Anyways, the distributors of these movies do a great job of targeting their audience and knowing where to open them, which often leads to high per theater counts from only a couple hundred theaters, or also in the 500-1,000 theater range. The most recent example was “Chhaava,” which opened in February to $1.8 million from 497 theaters. Sometimes they’ve ended up higher in the $5-8 million. “Sikander” is reported to be one of the more expensive Indian movies ever made, which could boost it higher, but its American release is probably less relevant here. There’s also a 1941 Indian film titled “Sikander,” and I was wondering if these two movies were connected, but the 1941 movie is about Alexander the Great, so that’s a no. This new one is about a fiery youth confronting a powerful network of corruption, fighting for the people’s rights. That’s not super descriptive, as it describes a lot of these. But big Indian action with all the things you’ve come to expect from these movies.
