Movie Preview: March 2018

February was "Black Panther" month at the domestic box office as the Marvel sensation has now become the third highest grossing movie in the Marvel Cinematic Universe as of right now, a mark it hit after just 11 days in theaters. Its 13-day total in the month of February ended up being a massive $428.8 million, which represented 43 percent of the overall business at the domestic box office, the highest mark for any February movie. In fact, this enormous box office total pushed February 2018 to record-breaking marks as the highest grossing February in history, narrowly missing out on becoming the first February to hit the $1 billion mark with $996.4 million. Had the other February releases shown up, it could've easily hit that mark, but no other February release was able to even top $100 million in February and only "Fifty Shades Freed" and "Peter Rabbit" were able to cross $50 million. And now we move onto March, where "Black Panther" is looking to make upwards of $250 million more, meaning it could end up as the highest grossing movie of March, too, as March 2018 doesn't look quite as strong as in past years and thus won't come near to the $1.17 billion record mark set last March. But there's a lot of big titles that will try their best, so let's dive in and look at them.

March 2nd - 4th-

After celebrating a $111.7 million last weekend, the highest grossing second weekend ever in the MCU, "Black Panther" will top the domestic box office for a third weekend straight with anywhere between $60-65 million, and perhaps even a bit more if our two new releases fail to register as they battle it out for second place. Of those two releases, the highest profile of the two is Red Sparrow. This is the Jennifer Lawrence suspense thriller that re-teams her with director Francis Lawrence, who she worked with in the final three Hunger Games movies. In "Red Sparrow," Lawrence plays a Russian ballerina named Dominika Egorova who is then forced to go to Sparrow School, where she, along with other men and women, are trained on how to use their bodies to seduce the enemy and obtain classified information. The movie is based on the 2013 novel written by Jason Matthews, a former CIA operative. A review of the novel by the CIA says the novel gives accurate insight as to how espionage around the world is conducted. Whether that translates into film or not is another story as the film is currently trending downwards with mixed reviews. It currently sports a 52 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. An opening around the $18.3 million of last year's "Atomic Blonde" seems likely.

While "Red Sparrow" is trending downwards, trending upwards of late is the Eli Roth action film Death Wish. Eli Roth is a director known mostly for his gore-fests, which appeal to a more niche audience, yet don't typically experience mainstream success. Of his four films that have had a wide release, "Hostel" is his biggest opening weekend with $19.6 million. The other three all opened with less than $10 million. The advantage that "Death Wish" has is that it stars Bruce Willis and Vincent D'Onofrio, star power that has never headlined an Eli Roth film. It's also a remake of the 1974 film of the same name, which is in turn based on the novel by Brian Garfield. So that adds a bit more recognition to this movie. The story is about a family man who goes on a violent killing spree after his family is brutally attacked. If it ends up matching the opening weekend of "Hostel," it could end up beating out "Red Sparrow" for second place. It's also worth noting that male-led action movies this year such as "The 15:17 to Paris," "The Commuter," "12 Strong" and "Den of Thieves" all opened in the $12-16 million range, which feels like a realistic landing spot for "Death Wish."

March 9th - 11th-

In its fourth weekend of release, "Black Panther" will be looking to take in another $40 million to the bank, give or take a few million either way. And for the first time in its incredible run, it'll have actual competition to take away that box office thrown away from it as fellow Disney movie A Wrinkle in Time will hit theaters. It's certainly been a great time for Disney in the last several years as in addition to owning Marvel and Lucasfilm, their own live-action affair have been doing incredible, highlighted recently by "Beauty and the Beast" earning $1.26 billion worldwide last year and "The Jungle Book" earning $966 million the year before. More heavy-hitters come next year with live-action remakes of "Dumbo," "Aladdin" and "The Lion King" all on the schedule. In the meantime, they'll be delivering "Christopher Robbin," "The Nutcracker and the Four Realms" and "Marry Poppins Returns" this year. Those titles coming after they take on their own adaptation "A Wrinkle in Time" this weekend. The movie stars Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, Chris Pine, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Zach Galifianakis, Michael Pena and David Oyelowo along with a handful of youngsters leading the way. It's directed by Ava DuVernay, director of "Selma" and "13th." Current projections peg "A Wrinkle in Time" opening around $50 million, which it'll need to top "Black Panther."

A trio of smaller releases will be joining the market alongside "A Wrinkle in Time," all of whom will be hoping for a place in the top five, but might have to settle for a spot just outside that region depending on how things turn out. Leading the way here will most likely be The Hurricane Heist. This is a movie directed by Rob Cohen, who the marketing is pushing heavily as the director of "The Fast and the Furious" and "xXx," the first movies in each of those franchises. What the marketing is mostly likely purposely choosing to ignore is that in the 15+ years since those two movies, Rob Cohen entire directorial filmography includes "Stealth," "The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor," "Alex Cross" and "The Boy Next Door," all of which are hovering around 10 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. So the man doesn't exactly have the best track record. But marketing team is hoping that his connection to "The Fast and the Furious" and "xXx" is good enough to get a few people out to see another ridiculous action movie where a team attempts to pull of a major heist while a category five hurricane is on its way. Cohen's previous two movies opened in the $10-15 million range.

Next up, STX will be releasing the comedy Gringo in about the same number of theaters as "The Hurricane Heist," so they could open up around the same in box office as well. "Gringo" is directed by Nash Edgerton, the brother of Joel Edgerton, and probably non-coincidentally, stars Joel Edgerton as the head of a business, along with Charlize Theron, who has developed a weed pill, which has simplified medical marijuana into a pill. Edgerton and Theron send David Oyelowo, who plays an employee of the company, down to Mexico to handle the marketing, but Oyelowo ends up getting kidnapped by the cartel. In response, Edgerton sends Sharlto Copley down to rescue Oyelowo, but the two end up getting stuck in various situations in the process. Director Nash Edgerton has previously worked mainly as a stunt coordinator, with acting and directing being mainly a side thing. That lack of experience raises some concerns, although it also reminds one of "John Wick,"  whose directors Chad Stahelski and David Leitch worked solely in the stunts department before successfully transitioning into the directing realm. So that does bring some hope here.

The final release of the weekend is the horror sequel The Strangers: Prey at Night. This movie is a sequel to the 2008 horror film "The Strangers," which was a home invasion thriller where a young couple was terrorized by three masked assailants over the course of an evening. The movie did quite well, actually, opening a hair under $21 million and making $52.6 million total on a budget of just $9 million, despite mixed reviews. Had this sequel come out a year or two after the original, then the potential for this film would've been really good. As is, though, a release 10 years after the fact, following a troubled production, means many people have probably forgot the original movie exists, thus meaning this is essentially like starting from scratch with an mostly identical premise, this time a whole family being terrorized by a group of masked assailants. The positive note here is that, even though it would've probably made a lot more money had it come out eight years ago, the budget on these types of horror movies is never too high, so this probably doesn't need to make a ton of money in order to make a profit. Aviron will be distributing this movie and they previously released the movie "Kidnap" last year to the tune of a $10 million opening and $30.7 million total.

March 16th - 18th-

There is an outside possibility that "Black Panther" wins a fifth weekend straight at the box office, as it'll look to make another $20-25 million, but if that does happen this weekend, it's a bad omen for March's new releases as it will mean both "A Wrinkle in Time" and this weekend's big new release, Tomb Raider, will have vastly underperformed. For "Tomb Raider," that wouldn't be a huge surprise as not many really asked for this franchise to be rebooted and video game adaptations have a poor history anyways. The most recent high-profile disasters in the genre were "Warcraft" and "Assassin's Creed," both in 2016, as they made $47.3 million and $54.6 million respectively at the domestic box office with budgets over $100 million. In terms of video game adaptations, it's worth noting that the highest grossing movie in the genre domestically is the Angelina Jolie Tomb Raider movie in 2001, which opened to $47.7 million and made $131.2 million total. The filmmakers here would be ecstatic if they could replicate that success with Alicia Vikander in the lead role this time around. Although looking at the 2003 sequel provides interesting metrics as "The Cradle of Life" opened to $21.8 million on its way to $65.7 million. Reviews for the film will be key here. If they come in as bad or average, "Tomb Raider" could wind up with numbers similar to "The Cradle of Life."

Opening alongside "Tomb Raider" is the teen high school drama Love, Simon. This movie is based on the book "Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda" and follows a high school student named Simon Spier who is a closet gay who has fallen for an anonymous classmate online who also claims to be gay. Simon says he deserves to have a good love story, but has to balance his family and friends with his decision of whether to come out as gay or not. This is from the producers of "The Fault in Our Stars," which was a mega hit for this teen romance genre in 2014, and is directed by Greg Berlanti, the producer of the Arrowverse on The CW, which now includes "Arrow," "The Flash," "Supergirl," "Legends of Tomorrow" and "Black Lightning." The LGBT angle for "Love, Simon" could be what separates it apart from other teen romance dramas and it certainly helps that it has a solid cast led by Nick Robinson as Simon, Josh Duhamel and Jennifer Garner as his parents, and other fellow classmates played by Katherine Langford ("13 Reasons Why"), Alexandra Shipp ("X-Men: Apocalypse"), Miles Heizer ("Nerve"), Talitha Eliana Bateman ("Annabelle: Creation") and Keiynan Lonsdale ("The Flash"). An opening close to the $12.7 million of "Paper Towns" feels appropriate.

The final movie of the weekend is the Christian film I Can Only Imagine. This movie is about the MercyMe song called "I Can Only Imagine," which was released in 2001 and did pretty well for a Christian song, peaking at No. 71 on the Billboard Hot 100, No. 5 on the Adult Contemporary, No. 27 on the Adult Top 40, No. 52 on the Hot Country Songs and No. 33 on the Mainstream Top 40. That in addition to being No. 1 on the Christian charts, of course. This movie is the story of how MercyMe's lead singer Bart Millard wrote the song and stars J. Michael Finley and Dennis Quaid. Christian films have a bit of a spotty track record at the box office as more often than not they struggle to get an audience beyond their target Christian audience. Being released close to Easter can change that, although this probably won't be the Easter hit of 2018. We'll talk about that one later. This one will probably play closer to the documentary about another Christian Band, Hillsong, in their movie "Hillsong - Let Hope Rise," which opened to $1.3 million in September 2016 and made $2.3 million total.

March 23rd - 25th-

Regardless of what happens with "Black Panther," "A Wrinkle in Time" and "Tomb Raider," this weekend will have a new box office champion and that should be Pacific Rim Uprising. "Pacific Rim" is an example of a movie that was initially seen as a flop when it opened to just $37.3 million in July 2013 on a budget of $190 million. Warner Bros. was looking for a whole heck of a lot more than that. Its final domestic total wound up as a mere $101.8 million. It ended up not being a flop thanks mostly to China, where it made $111.9 million after opening to $45.3 million. It's total foreign gross wound up being $309.2 million for a worldwide total of $411 million. Thus is why a sequel was justified. With 75 percent of that movie's gross coming overseas, what "Uprising" does in the U.S. almost doesn't matter. But it should do close to what the original made, at least. The filmmakers here with this sequel have gone all in with bigger monsters fighting more advanced robots in order to make your inner 9-year-old even happier than before. The disadvantage that "Uprising" has, outside the fact that it's now been five years, is that Guillermo del Toro is not back to direct. Instead we have Steven S. DeKnight in his feature film directorial debut after previously working in various writing, directing and producing roles in such T.V. shows as "Daredevil" and "Smallville."

A potential contender for the crown this week, if everything worked out in its favor, is Sherlock Gnomes. This is another belated sequel, this one dating back to February 2011 when "Gnomeo and Juliet" opened to $25.3 million on its way to almost hitting $100 million total with $99.97 million. And we get more garden gnome puns with this franchise as we move from Romeo and Juliet to Sherlock Holmes as the garden gnome version of Sherlock Holmes comes to investigate the disappearance of various garden ornaments. The disadvantage this movie has is that it's been eight years now since "Gnomeo and Juliet" came out, and that movie wasn't one with a whole lot of demand for a sequel in the first place. The trailers also indicate that this movie will be chalk full of fart and poop jokes throughout, which will probably have 3-year-olds laughing hysterically, but anyone much older facepalming, meaning the target audience seems directed specifically at young children without trying to please anyone else, thus limiting its box office potential. The biggest advantage here is that family audiences have been fairly underserved in 2018, so this could fill a void and perform well with no additional kid-targeted animated movies coming until "The Incredibles 2" on June 15.

While "Samson" ended up being dead on arrival last month and "I Can Only Imagine" might attract a small Christian audience this month, the big Easter movie this year that will attract the biggest audience will be Paul, Apostle of Christ. This, of course, tells the story of the apostle Paul in the New Testament, who started out as one of the most agressive persecutors of Christ's church at the time to being one of Christ's most devoted apostles, who ended up being responsible for most of our current New Testament. The specific vantage point this movie takes is when Paul is older and in prison at Rome. Luke, who was a very important figure in Paul's life, sneaks in to bring solace to Paul and together they decide they need to get Paul's story to the world, which is the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles being written. Jim Caviezel plays Luke in the film while James Faulkner stars as Paul. As far as a box office comparison, this movie comes from AFFIRM Films, a label of Sony Pictures, who were responsible for the movie "Risen," which opened to $11.8 million around Easter 2016, and made $36.9 million total. Other Easter comparisons are "Miracles from Heaven," which opened to $14.8 million a few weeks after "Risen" and made $61.7 total and "The Shack," which opened to $16.2 million this time last year and made $57.4 million total.

Continuing along with this busy fourth weekend, we have the romance drama Midnight Sun, which, much like last year's "Everything, Everything," is about a girl who has a condition that prevents her from being able to go out in the sunlight. The conflict comes in when she meets a guy and wants to be with him, but she can only go out at night and is not sure how to tell him about this. Our obligatory dreamy young couple in this particular romance drama are played by Bella Thorne and Patrick Schwarzenegger. If this were to follow the exact box office trajectory of "Everything, Everything," it would mean an $11.7 million opening and a $34.1 million total. However, this is Open Roads distributing this and they haven't had a $10 million opener since "Nightcrawler" in 2014. Of their six movies last year that they opened in at least 1,000 theaters, the average total was $5.9 million. Thus this could hit around that mark, or a bit lower like our other two smaller romance dramas in 2018 so far, "Forever My Girl," which opened with $4.2 million, and "Every Day," which opened with $3.0 million.

Our final wide release of this weekend is a small horror film called Unsane. This is a horror film from three-time Oscar nominated director Steven Soderbergh, who got a best director win for "Traffic," yet is probably most well known in the public's eye for directing "Ocean's Eleven," "Ocean's Twelve" and "Ocean's Thirteen," as well as last year's "Logan Lucky." Believe it or not, "Unsane" is a movie that was shot on an iPhone in 4K, which might open the eyes of some as far as what can be done with something you currently hold in your pocket right now if you know how to use it. "Unsane" opened at the Berlin International Film Festival to decent marks as it holds a 72 percent on Rotten Tomatoes through 18 reviews. The movie is about a girl who checks herself into a behavioral center, but then gets held longer than she initially signed up for when the doctor's, and later herself, start to question her sanity, especially when she thinks she starts seeing her stalker that she's been trying to get away from. This could have potential if Bleeker Street figures out how to market it, but their two wide releases last year opened to $7.6 million and $3.8 million respectively, the former being their highest opener to date, so history suggests this stays small.

That does it for wide releases this weekend, but a sixth movie that'll start in four theaters this weekend needs a quick mention and that is Wes Anderson's Isle of Dogs. When I talked about "Sherlock Gnomes," I mentioned there were no other kid-targeted animated movies coming out until June. I subtly threw in "kid-targeted" in there because I knew I wanted to mention "Isle of Dogs," which is also an animated movie, but is not exactly targeted towards kids as its PG-13 rating suggests the target audience here is fans of Wes Anderson, who is known for his strange, quirky films. Anderson's most recent film, "The Grand Budapest Hotel," was nominated for nine Oscars, including best picture, winning four of them. So he has some good will built in from that which should trickle over to "Isle of Dogs," which has the animation style of Anderson's "Fantastic Mr. Fox." The movie is set in Japan and follows a young boy's journey in trying to find his dog. The movie has already opened in three different European film festivals this year to great early reviews as it holds a 97 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, suggesting a good run in its future and potential awards consideration. At the very least, it seems like an easy write-in for the best animated feature category.

March 30th - April 1st-

The fifth and final weekend of March, which sneaks into April by the end of the weekend, is home of the movie with the most potential of the bunch and that is Ready Player One. This movie will actually get a head start on the weekend by opening a day early on Thursday, March 29. Although most of this movie's run will take place in April, it's the easy bet to end up with the most money of all the movies released in March. The biggest reason for that is "Ready Player One" gives off the vibe that this is classic Steven Spielberg. While the master himself has definitely put out some good movies of late, it's safe to assume that the 21st century hasn't been quite as nice to him as the 70's, 80's and 90's were. Yet with so much nostalgia vomit dumped into "Ready Player One," this feels like we've been taken back in time for a movie experience taken straight from Spielberg's golden era. And as "Stranger Things" has taught us, nostalgia vomit works really well in the modern era, especially when the 80's is a big focus. Although fans of the "Ready Player One" book are quick to point out that this story isn't just nostalgia vomit. There's a valuable lesson to be told here as our characters dive into this virtual reality world called the OASIS, searching for the creator's Easter Egg.

Poised to debut in second place of our three new releases is Tyler Perry's Acrimony. Tyler Perry has a pretty loyal fan base that usually show up for his movies, but admittedly the biggest draw for his fans is when he steps into his Madea suit. "Acrimony" not only sees Perry step away from Madea for a moment, but is also him going away from comedy altogether by directing a serious thriller. This is not completely out of the ordinary for Perry, but it's not his typical wheelhouse, which also means it probably won't be on the high end of his movies in terms of money earned. "Acrimony" stars Taraji P. Henson as a woman who goes crazy when she learns that her husband who she's been loyal to for so many years is now cheating on her and engaged to someone else. So definitely not anything new when it comes to the thriller genre. This will be the second lead role for Taraji this year after "Proud Mary" disappointed to just a $9.9 million opening. The Tyler Perry connection well probably help this movie go a bit higher than that, although poor reviews might cause this one to be left in the dust a bit. The eight Madea movies have averaged an opening of $26.1 million for Perry, but his non-Madea movies that he's directed average an opening of $18.8 million. "Acrimony" will either hit that average or be one of the movies that brings it down, but it probably won't help raise it.

Last and, well, possibly least is the third movie in the now God's Not Dead trilogy is God's Not Dead: A Light in Darkness. Pure Flix is out to prove for a third time that, no, God is still not dead. In the first movie, they proved it in a classroom as student debated with an atheist professor. In the second movie, they proved it in a courtroom after Sabrina the teenage witch, now a non-magical teacher, got in a lot of legal trouble when she brought God up in her classroom. And now the evil non-believers who are all going to Hell if they don't start believing in God have burned down Pastor Dave's church because it's not welcome in their community. An event that *totally* happens in our day. Yeah, a bit of tongue-in-cheek there, but the strong evangelicals will happily show up for this one, just like they did for the first two. But the rest of the world will probably ignore this, as was shown by the sharp decline from the first to the second movie. While "God's Not Dead" made a fantastic $60.8 million total in 2014, "God's Not Dead 2" made only a third of that with $20.8 million total in 2016. It wouldn't be surprising to see that total decline again, although probably not quite as drastically.