Movie Preview: January 2018

Last week I previewed the entire year with my annual yearly preview. This week it's time to look specifically at January. This month is always a mixed big. On the one hand, the holiday holdovers always play a big role in January numbers, which will be the case this January, specifically for "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" and "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle." On the other hand, January is a good month to start expanding the Oscar contenders as the Oscar nominations will be announced in the second half of the month. Thus we should see movies like "The Post," "Molly's Game," "I, Tonya," "The Shape of Water," "Darkest Hour," "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" and "Lady Bird" make a bit of an impact. But in terms of brand new releases, not expanding movies or holiday holdovers, this month is often seen as a dumping ground as studios throw out some movies they don't care as much for while saving their big releases for later. While there will definitely be some worthwhile crowd pleasers sprinkled in the mix, most of these new releases will be under that latter category, making it a slightly less interesting month for moviegoers when it comes to these new releases. But bad or good, let's dive in and explore all these new releases anyways!

January 5th - 7th-

The first weekend of January will see the holiday holdovers playing the biggest role. Poised to take the top spot will actually be "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle," ending the three week reign of "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" as "Jumanji" has started to overcome "The Last Jedi" throughout the week. While critics of "The Last Jedi" may see this and laugh, it's worth noting that a film as highly anticipated as "The Last Jedi" is usually very front-loaded, which was the case here as it became the top grossing movie of 2017 domestically in just three weeks, nearing $600 million at this point, while already having passed the $1 billion mark worldwide. "Jumanji," on the other hand, was a sequel that many were dreading. Yet as strong reviews and positive word of mouth got out that this was actually a movie worth seeing, fans of the original who initially were planning on skipping the sequel have started to show up in droves, making "Jumanji" a lot more back-loaded than normal. After strong reviews, "Molly's Game" will be expanding into about 1,500 theaters while "I, Tonya," "Darkest Hour" and "The Shape of Water" may also be expanding. Check out my December preview to learn more about most of those (I never covered "Darkest Hour" -- the others I did).

The lone new release that will be adding its name to the game is the latest chapter in the "Insidious" franchise, Insidious: The Last Key. In general, horror films in January are especially notorious for being panned by nearly everyone, critics and audiences alike. And a fourth movie in a horror franchise usually isn't a good sign in terms of quality. However, this opening weekend of January has been a great weekend for these poorly reviewed horror movies in terms of box office as the previous six years have all seen January open with a horror movie and those six movies have averaged an opening weekend total of $19.2 million, with 2012's "The Devil Inside" coming in at the high end with $33.7 million and 2016's "The Forest" coming in at the low end with $12.7 million. The "Insidious" franchise has been popular enough that this fourth movie should fit in perfectly in that range. The first "Insidious" was a sleeper hit in 2011, which caused "Insidious Chapter 2" to open to $40.3 million on its way to $83.6 million. "Insidious Chapter 3" then opened to $22.7 million on its way to $52.2 million. Continued diminished returns are expected for "The Last Key," but considering the small budget of these films, it won't take much for this to be considered a success.

January 12th - 15th-

With New Year's falling on a Monday this year, that means Martin Luther King Jr. Day also comes earlier than normal, this year on January 15. The extended four-day weekend should be very crowded as "Jumanji" and "The Last Jedi" should both play well yet again. The weekend also sees the expansion of Steven Spielberg's "The Post," which could come earn $20 million and challenge for the weekend win. Again, check out my December preview for more on "The Post." We also have four new wide releases, which will be led by the U.S. release of Paddington 2. The first "Paddington" wasn't supposed to be a January release initially, but was rescheduled due to high competition that Christmas season and ended up doing quite well in January 2015. So for the sequel, they went ahead and confidently placed it in January again, making it a bit of an anomaly when it comes to your typical January release. But everyone's favorite marmalade-loving bear is first and foremost a British comedy. As such, they got first stab at this sequel starting in early November and it's already made the U.S. equivalent of $50.8 million over there and was received just as strongly, if not better, than the original. As such, it's U.S. release is less significant, but the well reception over in the U.K. is a great sign for the American fan base who should also enjoy this sequel.

Next up is a movie that may be more of your typical January affair in terms of quality, but may do well at the box office after a strong marketing campaign and that is Proud Mary. Taraji P. Henson had a successful turn last year at this time with the sleeper hit "Hidden Figures" as that film, which initially snuck under people's radar, ended up having a huge box office run which was capped off with a best picture nomination. This year Henson gets to test her chops as an action star as she plays a hitwoman named Mary who is working for an organized crime family in Boston. Things will take a bit of a turn for her when a professional hit goes awry and she meets a little boy that she has caused to be orphaned. Co-starring with Henson will be Neal McDonough and Danny Glover, with Jahi Di'Allo Winston playing the young boy. The January release date along with the fact that this comes from director Babak Najafi, director of the poorly received 2016 action flick "London Has Fallen" are two major factors that cause there to not be a lot of confidence in this project.

The third wide release of the weekend will probably cause a lot of people to see Liam Neeson starring in this January action flick and immediately think that The Commuter is trying to be another "Taken" movie, but a closer look will reveal a more appropriate comparison. "The Commuter" sees Liam Neeson star as a normal businessman who gets caught up in a mysterious, dark conspiracy after a person on his train ride home approaches him and offers him $100,000 if he can identify a hidden passenger on the train. With that premise in mind, the more apt comparison comes with looking at the director of the film, which is Jaume Collet-Serra, the director of the 2014 film "Non-Stop," which was a whodunit mystery thriller starring Liam Neeson as an air marshal on a plane who receives a mystery serious of text messages saying he needs to deposit $150 million into an off-shore account or people on the plane will start dying. So, "The Commuter" is very similar to "Non-Stop," but is set on a train instead of a plane. This is also the third train-themed mystery/thriller to come out recently following "The Girl on the Train" and "Murder on the Orient Express." With "The 15:17 to Paris" coming out next month, it means there's a curious train movie trend happening in Hollywood right now.

The final release of the weekend will be the first animated movie of the year and that is Condorito: La Pelicula. As you could probably guess by that title, this is a Spanish animated movie. "Condorito" translates to "little condor" in Spanish and is thus about a little anthropomorphic condor living in the fictitious town of Pelotillehue. "Condorito" is based on a Chilean comic book and comic strip that has been around since 1949, so the obvious target audience here is the Latino community with this film adaptation of the popular comic strip character. The movie has already been released in several Spanish-speaking countries including Mexico and several Latin American countries and the troubling aspect of this is that the movie doesn't seem to be getting the best reception. Despite being released back in October in those countries, the movie has only made just under $8 million internationally and seems to have gotten mixed reviews at best. So the poor box office performance and mixed reviews from its target audience doesn't bode well for its U.S. release as this is probably the type of movie that has a hard time crossing $10 million overall in it's domestic run.

January 19th - 21st-

There's three new wide releases in the third weekend of January, but there's really only one of them that's set to make an impact and that is 12 Strong: The Declassified True Story of the Horse Soldiers. That long subtitle does a great job of describing what this movie is about. The movie is based on Doug Stanton's book "Horse Soldiers," which tells the true story of the CIA paramilitary officers and the U.S. Special Forces who were sent to Afghanistan immediately after the September 11 attacks to fight the Taliban forces in a bit of unconventional warfare. The obvious comparison here based on title, theme and release date is the 2016 January war film "13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi," which opened to $16.6 million on its way to a domestic total of $52.9 million, numbers that seem like a fair bar for "12 Strong" to hit. And even though January isn't the best month for movies, the war film genre seems to be the one genre that consistently performs well AND gives quality content in the month with recent movies such as "American Sniper" and "Lone Survivor" being additional examples of this along with "13 Hours." Starring in "12 Strong" is Chris Hemsworth, Michael Shannon, William Fichtner, Taylor Sheridan and Michael Pena.

The first of two other movies this weekend that probably won't make much of an impact is Den of Thieves, a gritty crime drama that pits an elite Los Angeles Sheriff's department against a team of well-trained outlaws who are addicted to bank heists. In this movie, this team of outlaws attempts a heist on the Federal Reserve Bank in downtown Los Angeles. Leading this team of potentially corrupt cops who seem bent on killing all of the outlaws instead of bringing them into custody is Gerard Butler, who is rather famous for his long streak of B-movie action flicks which has recently included "Geostorm," "Gods of Egypt," "London Has Fallen" and "Olympus Has Fallen." Butler's most famous role of this sort came in 2006 when he starred in the popular Zack Snyder film "300" as King Leonidas of Sparta. Either Butler has owned up to this type of role or he just has a lot of bad luck. Pick your choice. Leading the team of outlaws in "Den of Thieves" is Curtis Jackson, aka 50 Cent, and O'Shea Jackson Jr., a continually rising star and son of famous rapper Ice Cube. "Den of Thieves" has the potential to hit it's niche target audience, but isn't likely to make a huge dent with general audiences.

Last and possibly least on this weekend will be the romance drama Forever My Girl. While "Den of Thieves" will be aiming for the male audience who love the intense, gritty action films, "Forever My Girl" will hope to mainly attract the teenage girl crowd as the movie is about a fictional country star Liam Page who previously left his girl behind in pursuit of a music career. As it turns out, his girl found out she was pregnant just a couple of weeks after what was supposed to be their wedding day, after Liam had abandoned her. But now Liam learns for the first time that he now has a seven-year-old daughter that his girl never told him about and so he wants to come back and be a part of their lives. You could probably predict exactly what's going to happen with that premise and the target audience will want nothing less than to see those events unfold, so this could hit well. The biggest red flag for me is that this is distributed by Roadside Attractions, whose largest opening weekend ever came in 2011 when "The Conspirator" opened to $3.5 million. They've never opened a movie in more than 813 theaters as they rely on small releases with positive word of mouth to drive their films. So don't look for this to be a very huge release at all. At least not initially.

January 26th - 28th-

The final weekend of January only has one new wide release and that's a movie that could've played well had not extenuating circumstances forced the movie to be postponed. We're of course talking about Maze Runner: The Death Cure. This final chapter of the "Maze Runner" trilogy was supposed to come out in February 2017, but after principal photography began in March 2016, lead star Dylan O'Brien was severely injured on set and hospitalized after a stunt gone wrong left him with a concussion, a facial fracture, severe brain trauma and possibly more that postponed filming for an entire year while he recovered. The injury nearly ended his acting career, but luckily he has made a full recovery and is back in front of the camera. The unfortunate consequences for the franchise, though, is that it's now been nearly three years since "The Scorch Trials" came out in September 2015, which was a movie that wasn't well-liked in the first place. Since then, the genre has been completely run into the ground as "The Hunger Games" finale under-performed and "The Divergent" series completely imploded as the second to last movie performed so poorly that the final movie never even happened. Do people really care about the "Maze Runner" franchise anymore? Is there anyone even remotely interested in the genre as a whole? Probably not.