Movie Preview: May 2018

As was expected going into April, summer came a bit early this year with the late decision by Disney to bump "Avengers: Infinity War" up a week to April 27. Said decision resulted in the largest domestic opening weekend ever of $257.7 million to fall in April. Add in another $24.7 million for "Infinity War" on Monday, April 30, and that was enough to push April 2018 over the edge as the first April to cross the billion mark with $1.02 billion. Although that $282.4 million that "Infinity War" earned in April was only 27.7 percent of the total gross for the month, meaning the rest of the slate helped out greatly, especially the $149.4 million total for "The Quiet Place," $78.5 million of "Rampage" and $53.5 million of "Blockers" as well as great holdovers from both "Ready Player One" and "Black Panther." Now we move onto the first official month of the summer where we're going to mainly sit pretty for a couple weeks while "Infinity War" continues to rake in all of the money, but then we'll kick things into high gear with two major franchises set for huge openings, which should lead a rather busy and exciting summer. The May record is $1.14 billion set in 2013, which may have been reachable had "Infinity War" not jumped up a week. But as is, that record is most likely safe for another year.

May 4th - 6th-

The biggest question of this first weekend will be how much "Infinity War" makes in its second weekend. The best comparison are the previous two Avengers movies. The original 2012 movie fell 50.3 percent in its second weekend while "Age of Ultron" fell a steeper 59.4 percent. Using both movies as the range for "Infinity War" this weekend, that will leave it somewhere between $105-125 million for its second weekend. The all-time record for a second weekend is "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" with $149.2 million. Although that movie was a December release, hence the light 39 percent fall from its opening weekend. If "Infinity War" can manage to top the $111.7 million of "Black Panther" from earlier this year, it will claim second place.

As far as the new releases for this weekend, leading the pack will be the Anna Faris and Eugenio Derbez comedy remake Overboard. The original 1987 movie was directed by Garry Marshall, also known for "Pretty Woman" and "The Princess Diaries" among others, and starred Goldie Hawn as a stuck-up rich girl and Kurt Russell as a lowly, poor carpenter. When Goldie Hawn suffers amnesia and her real husband decides not to take her back, Kurt Russell decides to claim her as his wife, thus forcing her to live a life in poverty with him. In this remake, the roles are flipped and Eugenio Derbez is the spoiled rich man whereas Anna Faris is a lowly carpet cleaner. When Derbez suffers amnesia, Faris comes up with a plan to take him in as her husband, forcing him to live a life in poverty. This remake isn't getting very good early marks from critics at just 30 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, but the original wasn't necessarily a critical darling, either. Tracking metrics have it playing similar to, or ahead of, Derbez's previous film "How to Be a Latin Lover," which opened to $12.3 million in 1,118 at nearly this same exact time last year. With "Overboard" opening in 1,623 theaters, if it were to follow a similar per theater average, that would equate to $17.8 million for this weekend.

Hoping to compete for a place in the top five will be the Charlize Theron drama Tully. The advantage that this movie has is strong critical reviews with a certified fresh score of 90 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. The disadvantage is a lower theater count at just 1,353 theaters. "Tully" chronicles the pains and struggles of motherhood, especially for women in their 30's and older, who, as the trailer talks about, often feel like they have disappeared into the background, thus feeling rather worthless at times after such vibrant and active lives they had in their 20's. Charlize Theron plays one said mother in this movie who has become overwhelmed with life, as she has to raise her several kids almost on her own while her husband is extremely busy with his work. This leads her to eventually accept her wealthy brother's offer of hiring a nighttime nanny named Tully to help her out with her responsibilities. The movie is directed by Jason Reitman, who also directed "Juno," "Up in the Air" and "Thank You for Smoking." Given that this is more of an adult-targeted drama, said audience are not necessarily known for rushing out opening weekend, meaning this could be more naturally backloaded, especially with Mother's Day around the corner.

The final movie of the weekend is the movie with the highest theater count of the three, yet the movie that might make the smallest dent and that is Bad Samaritan. This is a movie that was initially scheduled for an April 27 release date, but when "Infinity War" took that date, Electric Entertainment smartly decided to swap and take this May 4 release date instead. But in the vein of this initially being a late-April throwaway movie, we have a horror/thriller that might have a hard time finding an audience. The movie is about a pair of young robbers who steal a man's car and intend to rob his home only to find a woman held captive in the home. David Tennant is the biggest name in the movie as the man whose home is being robbed while the other actors in the movie are lesser known. The movie is directed by Dean Devlin, producer of "Independence Day," "Stargate" and other Roland Emmerich films while having directed last year's "Geostorm." Distributor Electric Entertainment will be experimenting with their first film opening in wide release, as "Bad Samaritan" hits 2,007 theaters, after their only previous two films include "LBJ" (659 theaters) and "Blackaway" (11 theaters).

May 11th - 13th-

It'll be an uncontested third weekend at No. 1 for "Infinity War" this weekend again as following the trajectories of the first two Avengers movies would land it somewhere between $52-67 million. Although this weekend will provide our first potential sleeper candidate of the summer as Melissa McCarthy's Life of the Party debuts. Ever since "Bridesmaids" in 2011, every comedy that McCarthy has led has opened to at least $20 million, making her one of the safest comedy bets around at the moment when it comes to box office. This movie has her playing a middle-aged mother who decides to go back to college with her daughter to finish her degree after her husband suddenly asks for a divorce. The mother/daughter banter throughout the movie could very well be timely for this weekend with Mother's Day on Sunday. "Life of the Party" will again reunite McCarthy with director Ben Falcone, who she's been married to since 2005. Falcone previously directed "Tammy" and "The Boss," which opened to $21.6 million and $23.6 million respectively, so there's a good bet as to where "Life of the Party" could also debut. "Tammy" went onto make $84.5 million while "The Boss" wasn't quite as lucky, landing at $63.3 million, which is still fairly respectable, though.

The other movie is another Mother's Day themed movie, albeit with a polar opposite angle from "Life of the Party" and that is Breaking In. This movie sees Gabrielle Union playing a mother who takes her kids to visit the home of her father, who has recently passed away, only to experience a home invasion where a group of guys take her kids hostage and make certain demands or else none of them will make it out alive. So we essentially have a home invasion thriller with Gabrielle Union fighting like a mother to protect and save her kids. The movie is directed by James McTeigue, who directed "V for Vendetta" in 2006, although he hasn't done much of note since. A better name to point out is producer Will Packer, who has produced a long string of hits. When it comes to "Breaking In," perhaps the most notable Packer-produced thrillers include "No Good Deed" and "Obsessed," which opened to $24.2 million and $28.6 million respectively. That mark seems like a best case scenario as there's a lot of potential comparisons here, ranging from "Unforgettable," which tanked by opening to just $4.8 million, or medium hits such as Halle Berry's "Kidnap" ($10 million opening), "When the Bough Breaks" ($14.2 million opening) and "Proud Mary" ($9.9 million opening).

May 18th - 20th-

After two full weeks of Hollywood letting "Infinity War" dominate at the box office while providing some smaller options for attempted counter-programming, we have our next major summer blockbuster and that is fellow superhero movie Deadpool 2. This is a movie that was initially set for a June 1 release date, but Fox decided to release it the weekend before "Solo: A Star Wars Story" instead of the weekend after, which was the domino that caused "Infinity War" to in turn jump up a week to April 27. "Deadpool" was a movie in 2016 that took a huge risk. Prior to that, R-rated superhero movies did exist, but they were few and far between while being on the smaller end of the scale in terms of size. The mindset of Hollywood was that you couldn't release an R-rated superhero movie and have it make money. It had to be PG-13. Thus the huge risk for "Deadpool," which turned into huge reward as the movie opened to $132 million on its way to $363 million total, basically proving to Hollywood that as long as you have a well-marketed, high-quality movie, the rating doesn't matter. "Deadpool 2" has gone all out with its marketing. That along with the good will from the first movie should help it get to an opening similar to that of its predecessor.

There should be plenty of laughs to go around this month. In addition to "Overboard," "Life of the Party" and "Deadpool 2," another option for audiences will be Book Club. Despite the high level of competition when it comes to comedy this month, this movies seems like it's in decent shape because its target audience seems to be the older, senior crowd who probably don't have much interest in "Life of the Party" or "Deadpool 2." The movie stars four of Hollywood's beloved senior actresses, Diane Keaton (72), Jane Fonda (80), Candice Bergen (71) and Mary Steenburgen (65), who play lifelong friends who decide to read "50 Shades of Grey" in their book club, which in turn stimulates their desires to reinvigorate their own love lives, despite their age. The movie is directed by first time director Bill Holderman, who is known for his work as a producer, most notably for the movie "A Walk in the Woods" in 2015, which starred Robert Redford and Nick Nolte as two long-time friends who decided to hike the Appalachian Trail. The box office for that movie might be a good comparison for "Book Club" as "A Walk in the Woods" opened to a modest $8.2 million, but held fairly well to end up with $29.5 million.

The final movie of this weekend is the first movie in May to be targeted specifically at family audiences and that is Show Dogs. While "Peter Rabbit" was a huge hit for families earlier this year, the market has been a little sparse since then as "A Wrinkle in Time" and "Sherlock Gnomes" performed decently in March, but not great, and "Sgt. Stubby: An American Hero" was more of a blip in the radar in April. So the market is probably ready for another family hit, especially as school comes to a close for kids. The problem is that, even though the market is ready for another hit, the options on the table still have to be appealing and the reaction to the trailers for "Show Dogs" haven't been very nice to say the least. The movie involves a police dog going undercover with his human at a dog show in order to help advert a certain crisis. The movie comes to us via director Raja Gosnell, who previously directed "Beverly Hills Chihuahua" and both live-action Scooby-Doo movies, so he seems to be an expert at these sub-par live-action kids movies involving talking animals. Granted, kids are pretty nice and forgiving as critics, but it's still the parents buying the tickets and they might choose to save their money for the likes of "The Incredibles 2" and/or "Hotel Transylvania 3."

May 25th - 27th-

Last, but certainly not least, we have just one movie opening on the final weekend of May, but it could be the biggest one and that is of course Solo: A Star Wars Story. The conversation surrounding Star Wars has certainly been an interesting one over the last few months as "The Last Jedi" did a great job of completely dividing fans, causing the conversation to turn from friendly chatter to heated debates, feeling almost political in nature. That combined with the fact that the idea of a Han Solo movie without Harrison Ford has never been a well-received one among fans. Add in all of the production issues this movie has had with the firing of directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller late in the game, turning to Ron Howard as a replacement, and this all means that Lucasfilm has an uphill battle to climb with this movie. However, lest you think this movie is poised to flop, allow me to remind you that it's going to take a lot more than one controversial film to push away all Star Wars fans. Despite a small portion of fans claiming they will forever boycott Star Wars, people will show up. Even the much maligned prequels all made over $300 million at the domestic box office. Early tracking for "Solo" has it at the pace of "Rogue One," which opened to $155.1 million.