Movie Preview: August 2018

Typically July has been the biggest month of the summer, but for only the sixth time since 1982, that ended up not being the case as this July's total of $1.187 billion came in behind the $1.269 billion June total. That $1.187 billion total also came well behind the 2011 record of $1.395 billion and was even ninth place overall since 2000. With constantly increasing ticket prices over the years, this could be seen as a disappointment. On the contrary, it could also be seen as a sign that the year as a whole has been more balanced rather than all the big films being crammed into a few months as July is the fifth month in 2018 to cross the $1 billion mark, which is a record through July. In fact, no other year has had more than five months in the whole year cross $1 billion. The year as a whole is still 7.9 percent ahead of 2017 and 5.8 percent ahead of 2016 at this same point. July was led by "Ant-Man and the Wasp" ($186.7 million), June holdovers "Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom" ($153.8 million) and "Incredibles 2" ($150.2 million), and "Hotel Transylvania 3" ($122.8 million). And now we head into the final month of the summer season, where things typically wind down at the box office. Yet there's still plenty of releases to talk about, even though none are set to be huge, so let's dive in.

August 3rd - 5th-

Leading the way in August is, yet again, Disney. This time around they have their latest live-action adaptation of one of their animated properties, with Winnie the Pooh and gang getting the treatment in Christopher Robin, a movie that follows an adult Christopher Robin, played by Ewan McGregor, as all of his favorite animal friends from his childhood come back to visit him in order to rekindle his sense of joy and adventure, a premise similar to that of Steven Spielberg's 1991 film "Hook." It's been quite the year for Disney as films they've distributed have accounted for a massive 35 percent of the overall box office total with a $2.95 billion total. And they're far from done as they also have "The Nutcracker and the Four Realms," "Ralph Breaks the Internet" and "Mary Poppins Returns" later in the year. As pertaining to their live-action adaptations, "Christopher Robin" is not going to come anywhere near the likes of "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Jungle Book," yet this was never the expectation here. A better comparison might be fellow August release of "Pete's Dragon," which made $76.2 million in 2016 after opening to $21.5 million. Other potential comparisons might include "Tomorrowland" ($93.4 million) or "A Wrinkle in Time" ($100.4 million).

While family audiences and Winnie the Pooh fans flock out to see "Christopher Robin," Lionsgate will be attempting some counter-programming with The Spy Who Dumped Me, an action comedy starring Mila Kunis and Kate McKinnon whose title is an obvious play on the 1977 Bond film "The Spy Who Loved Me." This is certainly not the first time that Hollywood has had a bit of fun with this title, with perhaps the most notable parody being the 1999 Austin Powers sequel "The Spy Who Shagged Me." In "The Spy Who Dumped Me," Mila Kunis is initially feeling down on her luck after her boyfriend dumped her in a text, but soon learns that her boyfriend dumped her because he's secretly a spy for the CIA and both of their lives are in danger. Before much can happen, suddenly Mila Kunis and her best friend, played by Kate McKinnon, are dragged into this intense scenario and are forced to fight for their lives. This adds yet another action movie to the mix after a crowded July for actions films, yet the comedy will be the biggest draw here, meaning this is probably headed for an opening in the teens like several of our other 2018 comedies such as "Tag" and "Game Night."

The third wide release of the weekend is one that may be dead on arrival and that is Fox's The Darkest Minds. What exactly is this movie? Well, yeah, that's the big problem here as Fox dropped the trailer back in March, yet have done almost nothing since to advertise it, thus awareness here is extremely low. The answer to what exact is this movie is that it's another dystopian-esque movie based on a young adult novel, meaning that this is about three or four years too late to be relevant as the genre has kinda died out. Even The Hunger Games series struggled at the very end comparatively and the Divergent series crashed so hard that they never even made their final film. Occasionally another movie like this shows up, but nothing has been able to catch fire as audiences don't seem to care anymore. But the plot here surrounds an epidemic where 98 percent of children under 20 have died while the remaining children have developed super powers and are on the run as they've been declared a threat by the government. Despite all the previously mentioned issues, Fox is still opening this in over 3,000 theaters, making it a candidate for one of the worst opening weekends for a movie playing in 3,000 theaters. The current record holder is 2006's "Hoot" with $3.4 million.

The final film sneaking into theaters is Dinesh D'Souza's latest political documentary Death of a Nation. The previous three documentaries that D'Souza has put out, each being two years apart and released just ahead of election season, are "2016: Obama's America" in 2012, the 2014 follow-up "America: Imagine the World Without Her" where he brags about how right he was in the previous documentary, even though said legitimacy is extremely debatable, and finally "Hillary's America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party," which was released in 2016, ahead of the extremely controversial election. "Death of a Nation" sees D'Souza compare Trump's presidency to Abraham Lincoln's presidency ahead of this year's midterm elections. The documentary currently holds a 0 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes and a score of 1 on Metacritic, which has a 0 to 100 scale. Of course fans of D'Souza's work won't be bothered by this as they'll label said critics as liberal scams and go out to support D'Souza anyways. The previous three documentaries, in their first weekend of wide release, made $6.5 million, $2.7 million and $3.9 million respectively. Given that this year is mid-year elections and not a presidential election, "Death of a Nation" will probably finish on the low end of that.

August 10th - 12th-

The race to No. 1 at the box office could be rather intense in the second weekend of August as "Mission: Impossible - Fallout" and "Christopher Robin" will both probably be headed towards $15-18 million, which is exactly the range our two new major releases will be looking at. My personal early bet will be on the new horror release Slender Man winning out, although "Fallout" could easily take it. Either way, "Slender Man" looks like it'll beat out "The Meg," our other new release, so we'll talk about it first. If you're unfamiliar with Slender Man, he's a modern internet horror legend created in 2009 that quickly went viral among the teen crowd. The most notable event regarding Slender Man came in 2014 when two 12-year-old girls in Wisconsin stabbed a classmate 19 times, essentially claiming that they did it for Slender Man. Both girls are now locked up in a mental institution, but the viral nature of this character, along with all the controversy, means it's ripe for a PG-13 teen horror film adaptation, putting this into essentially the same ball park of "Ouija," all things considered. "Ouija" opened to $19.8 million in October 2014, which seems right for "Slender Man." It could also open close to "Don't Breathe" ($26.4 million) or "Lights Out" ($21.7 million) from summer 2016.

The other major that I mentioned that will be in competition for the top spot is our latest shark movie, The Meg. Shark movies have been a consistently popular thing since "Jaws" came out in 1975 and helped revolution the modern-day blockbuster. So this is certainly nothing new, but recently there's been a bit of a spark in the shark movie sub genre of horror thanks to "The Shallows" in 2016 and "47 Meters Down" in 2017, both earning around a total of $50 million at the domestic box office. So why not continue this trend and attempt to go three for three? That's what's Hollywood is asking, anyways. And it's time to raise the stakes this time around as not only do the people of this movie have a giant shark terrorizing them, but said giant shark is actually a megalodon, an extinct species of shark estimated have been anywhere from 43 to 82 feet long, depending on which shark expert you talk to. For comparison, most great white sharks are around 15 feet long. Adding to the appeal of the movie is that leading the way is Jason Statham, one of today's more popular action stars. If we stick to the previous two movies for comparison, "The Shallows" opened to $16.8 million while "47 Meters Down" opened to $11.2 million. That seems like a reasonable range.

While "Slender Man" and "The Meg" are the two major releases this weekend that have a shot at the top spot, there are two more smaller movies released this weekend sneaking into a wide release, the first of which is Dog Days, which actually opens on Wednesday August 8. This will be the third dog movie to come out this year so far after "Isle of Dogs" and "Show Dogs," and the first of two dog movies in August. We'll get to the other one, "A.X.L.," later on in this post. "Dog Days" stars Vanessa Hudgens and Finn Wolfhard as our two most recognizable actors in the film, but doesn't seem to really have a solid story to go along with it. It's the tale of a whole bunch of people in Los Angeles who become connected due to their dogs, perhaps in a "Valentine's Day" style of story telling, but with dogs instead of romance. The movie is distributed by LD Entertainment, who have only released three movies theatrically, and none since 2013. Of those three, they've only opened one nationwide and that was "The Collection" in 2012, which opened to $3.1 million. If we look at "Show Dogs," that movie opened to $6 million back in May while "Isle of Dogs" got $5.5 million when it expanded nationwide. Again, this does open on Wednesday, so that will soften its three-day weekend total.

The final movie of the weekend that's currently scheduled to open in around 1,500 theaters is the return of director Spike Lee as he delivers his film BlacKkKlansman. Unless a movie like "Black Panther" or "A Quiet Place" can break through in the awards race this season, "BlacKkKlansman" represents our first big awards contender as it tells the true story of Ron Stallworth, a black police officer from Colorado who managed to infiltrate the KKK in the 1970's and become the head of the local chapter, sending a white officer in his place when face-to-face meetings were required. The movie stars John David Washington, son of Denzel Washington, as Ron Stallworth, with Adam Driver as his white officer counter part and Topher Grace is Klan leader David Duke. Given the premise, one can naturally expect a bit of an intense experience with this movie, although probably not quite on the level of last August's "Detriot" given that "BlacKkKlansman" does have at least a touch of a comedic edge to it. As pertaining to the awards race, the August release date does give it a bit of a disadvantage as that's a touch too early when it comes to awards season politics, but given the racial undertones, this definitely seems like a potential contender if it plays its cards right.

August 17th - 19th- 

After what could be an intense second weekend when it comes to the race for the No. 1 spot, the third weekend will be a bit more cut and dry as it will be a race between the two big new releases. Currently it seems like Mile 22 is the one with the edge, mostly due to the fact that "Crazy Rich Asians" opens on Wednesday, which will soften it's three-day opening weekend total. Thus we talk about "Mile 22" first. This will be the fourth movie directed by Peter Berg that stars Mark Wahlberg, with the first three being "Lone Survivor," "Deepwater Horizon" and "Patriots Day," all of which were intense movies based on true stories where Wahlberg plays some sort of heroic character caught in a bad situation who needs to help save others. "Mile 22" is not exactly that variety of story, but is more of your typical late August action thriller. Wahlberg stars as a CIA operative charged with the task of transporting a dangerous "asset" 22 miles while being chased by a whole bunch of terrorists. Said asset is a human being played by Iko Uwais, star of the Raid movies. Ronda Rousey, John Malkovich and Lauren Cohan also co-star. An opening close to last August's "The Hitman's Bodyguard" might be in play here as that opened to $21.4 on this exact weekend.

Now we shift our focus to the other major release of the weekend, that being the previously mentioned Crazy Rich Asians. If "Mile 22" fails to deliver, this movie seems poised to step up. This here is a romantic comedy based on the best-selling novel of the same name that centers around a Chinese American woman from New York who accompanies her boyfriend to his best friend's wedding in Singapore where she learns that said boyfriend comes from a family who is one of the richest families in Singapore. The drama with this romance is that she learns he is a very desirable male, making her feel a bit insignificant and out of place. The movie is directed by Jon M. Chu, who has quite the variety of film his directorial filmography, ranging from the Justin Bieber documentaries, the second and third Step Up movies, "G.I. Joe: Retaliation," "Jem and the Holograms" and "Now You See Me 2." Now he'll add this romantic comedy to his resume. As far as box office comparisons go, there's a plethora of romance films, both from the comedy and drama variety, to come out in the last couple of years and most of them manage to open somewhere in the teens. So it seems like this will be a matter of where in the teens will it debut rather than if it will.

The third wide release on the docket is the very troubled production of Alpha. Earlier when I talked about "Dog Days" I mentioned that there were two dog movies this month. Well, technically this would make three if we count it because a wolf is a dog and "Alpha" is a survival story set 20,000 years ago during the last Ice Age wherein a young hunter befriends an injured wolf. A sort of man's best friend origin sort of thing. The biggest problem with this movie is that it's bounced around the schedule like a ping pong ball as it was initially supposed to come out September 2017, before being pushed back to March 2018, then again to September 2018 and finally moved up to this spot in August. A movie having been moved around so much is never a great sign when it comes to the studio's confidence in said film and with the final release date coming in mid-August, it seems like Sony just settled when it came to "Alpha." Or maybe they resigned to the fact that this wasn't going to be a big money maker like they probably wanted it to be when they had the September or March release dates and dumped it in mid August to get it over with. As such, it doesn't seem like it will be able to find much of an audience as some projections have it opening in single digits.

August 24th - 27th-

The fourth weekend of August sees the return of the Muppets as Brian Hensen, director of "The Muppet Christmas Carol" and "Muppet Treasure Island," now presents The Happytime Murders. Although this version is not your childhood version of the Muppets. In fact, calling it THE Muppets is also wrong as this is not Kermit, Miss Piggy, Gonzo and the rest of the gang. It's more of an off-brand version of the Muppets brought together for the sake of extreme shock value in a raunchy, adult version of the Muppets. It's probably best to just call them puppets. Anyways, the story follows an 80's puppets TV show where the puppets cast start getting killed one by one, so a puppet detective takes on the case and things get wild from there. In fact, this is sure to offend the fans of the real Muppets, but that might be the point. Shock value. Thus the best comparison here "Sausage Party," which was an animated movie that was purposely as raunchy as possible just for the sake of shock value. The movie opened to $34.3 million in August 2016, which would be a fantastic number for "The Happytime Murders." Given that a human Melissa McCarthy also stars, her recent film "Life of the Party" should also be considered as that opened to $17.9 million back in May.

The rest of the month's releases will most likely follow the typical late August trend of having a hard time making this thing called money, but a potential sleeper comes with the Screen Gems thriller Searching. This is a thriller shot from the point of view of smartphones and computer screens, much like the movie "Unfriended" and it's sequel from last month, "Unfriended: Dark Web." The story involves a father trying to find clues to the disappearance of his 16-year-old daughter. In doing so, he dives through all her social media accounts and the like, discovering that she had a lot of secrets that he never knew about. Screen Gems has a pretty good history with thrillers at the box office with the likes of "No Good Deed," "The Perfect Guy," "Don't Breathe" and "When the Bough Breaks," but what makes "Searching" unique is that it's a film that comes from Sundance. Sundance films don't always translate to success with general audiences, but "Searching" is a film that the Sundance crowd gave good praise to, so if it does click with general audiences, there's potential here, but the late August release date makes it hard to predict because there's a lot of smaller films that have completely disappeared in this spot. A $10 million debut would probably be a win.

The final movie from this weekend is one that I've referenced a few times in this post already and that is our final dog movie A.X.L. This particular dog movie involves a robotic dog. Or, rather, an artificial intelligence dog whose code name A.X.L. stands for Attack, Exploration, Logistics. A.X.L. is discovered by a kid named Miles, played by Alex Neustaedter, who befriends him as he seems abandoned. After the two become friends, the scientists who created A.X.L. make an effort to get him back, which Miles is determined to stop, fearing what might happen if they do succeed and recapturing him. Miles gets assistance in this effort from his female friend Sara, who is played by pop star Becky G. The benefit of "A.X.L." is that it gives family audiences an additional option as "Christopher Robin" is really the only other choice for the month, but the previous single-digit numbers discussed early in the "Dog Days" paragraph also probably apply here. Specifically "A.X.L." is from distributor Global Roads, who also distributed "Show Dogs" from earlier in the summer, which as a reminder opened to $6 million. The other two films that Global Roads has distributed are "Midnight Sun," which opened to $4 million, and "Hotel Artemis," which opened to $3.2 million.

August 31st - September 3rd-

The final weekend of the month is Labor Day weekend. I'm including it here because I go by what month the weekend started here in these monthly previews, thus Labor Day weekend sneaks into the August preview with August 31 being a Friday. Labor Day weekend is never a strong one at the box office as only three movies have ever opened above $20 million, thus Hollywood rarely opens any notable movies here, making it a bit of a self-fulling prophesy that should continue this year as none of these three releases this weekend are likely to do much. Although last year saw all the holdover films get a solid uptick from the previous weekend, which bodes well for "The Happytime Murders" to sneak in a second win, assuming of course that it beats out "Searching" and "A.X.L." in the previous weekend like I'm expecting it to.

Given that it's possible for all three new releases to open below $5 million and potentially struggle to hit the top 10, I'll clump all three of them here in this paragraph. Starting things off on Wednesday August 29, we have Operation Finale, which is a historical drama starring Oscar Isaac and Ben Kingsley and is about a team of secret agents who come together 15 years after World War II to hunt down Adolf Eichmann, the infamous Nazi architect of the Holocaust. Given the cast and the subject matter, this is the movie with perhaps the best potential of the newcomers. The next best challenger is Kin, which is an action sci-fi starring James Franco, Zoe Kravitz, Dennis Quaid, Carrie Coon and Jack Reynor. The movie sees a 12-year-old boy named Eli discover an alien weapon near a local junkyard. He goes home to his older brother and quickly the two of them find themselves on the run from a crime lord, the FBI and some alien soldiers, making for a bit of a bizarre sci-fi flik. Finally, Pantelion will be releasing the Spanish-language film Ya Veremos, a drama about a child named Santi who is losing his sight amidst his parents separating and has a wish list for them to do before he goes into his surgery. Pantelion does have a history of box office surprises, so look out for this one, too.