Movie Preview: October 2018

September was unsurprisingly the slowest month of 2018 thus far. But that's to be expected as September is typically the lowest-grossing month of the year, although last year that honor belonged to October, which definitely won't be the case this year, but we'll get to that. As far as September standards go, this year was actually fairly productive as the $664.3 million that was earned was the second highest September on record, behind only last year's $697.6 million total that was notably boosted by the huge phenomenon that was "IT," which accounted for 41.1 percent of the month's total earnings. Compare that to this year where the $109 million September total of "The Nun" only accounted for 16.4 percent of the month's total, meaning we had a much more balanced total this time around with 12 movies making at least $20 million and five making at least $40 million. Last year only had seven movies make $20 million while only two crossed the $40 million threshold. Now as previously noted, October is oftentimes just as low as September at the box office. However, with several huge juggernauts on the schedule this month, that almost certainly won't be the case, meaning 2014's record of $758 million is well within striking range, so let's dive in and look at it.

October 5th - 7th-

Things are set to start off with a bang this October as we have, not one, but two movies that could challenge the October opening weekend record, which is currently held by "Gravity" with $55.8 million. In fact, no two new October releases have combined to earn $100 million on the same weekend, which is quite likely to happen this weekend. Tracking indicates that Sony's Venom will be leading the charge. Sony has had a bit of a rocky history of late with their superhero movies, which caused them to strike up a deal with Marvel to let Spider-Man over into the MCU. But they're stubbornly not giving up on having their own cinematic universe separate from Marvel and they're hoping to launch that with "Venom," one of the more popular antiheroes in Marvel comics and a common foe of Spider-Man, who most recently showed up in "Spider-Man 3." Tom Hardy takes the lead role of Eddie Brock, aka Venom, as he faces off against, not Spider-Man, but fellow symbiote Riot, played by Riz Ahmed.

As far as the box office potential for "Venom," industry tracking for a while now has pegged this in the $50-70 million range for opening weekend, which puts it well below the typical $80-100 million that the solo MCU films have been making and only half as much as "Spider-Man: Homecoming," which opened to $117 million last year. However, without Spider-Man, and without the MCU label, it would be unfair to expect "Venom" to hit those levels, which is why Sony has smartly only spent $100 million on the production budget, which is at least half that of the $200+ million budget of Sony's "Amazing Spider-Man" movies as well as far below the $250 million budget of "Spider-Man 3." So "Venom" doesn't need to make as much to earn a profit for Sony. In fact, if it does hit in the expected range, that makes the comparison of "X-Men: Apocalypse" a viable one as that movie opened to $65 million, making $155 million total. The lackluster reviews might also cause it to fall lower and come closer to the $53 million that both "Green Lantern" and "The Wolverine" opened to, leaving a potential $115-130 million final total. Add in the overseas numbers and Sony just might be able to sneak out a win.

Playing challenger to "Venom," helping the weekend get to record-breaking levels for October, is the fourth cinematic iteration of A Star is Born. This story was first told in 1937 with Janet Gaynor and Fredric March. It was remade in 1954 with Judy Garland and James Mason and again in 1976 with Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson. And now Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper take the reins. Each iteration of the story has involved two individuals on the opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of their career -- either acting or music, depending on the version -- finding each other and falling in love, with one having their star rising while the other is experiencing a downward spiral. Each of the three versions have been met with some level of acclaim at the Academy Awards, with the 1937 and 1954 films each getting both of the lead actors a nomination, a feat that this 2018 film is looking to replicate after very strong reviews out of the festivals. In fact, the 1937 film received a total of seven nominations, the 1954 film received six and the 1976 film received four. Early buzz suggests that this 2018 film might top all of them for nominations, or at least match the high total. Because of all this, a lengthy box office run is in play here and it's looking to start off with at least $40-50 million.

October 12th - 14th-

This next weekend could be a bit of an interesting race for the top spot. Depending on how "Venom" and "A Star is Born" perform on their opening weekends, either of them could feasibly be in for a second weekend around $30 million, with "A Star is Born" likely to have the better weekend two hold. And $20-30 million is where two of our new openers this weekend will be aiming for, with First Man being the most likely candidate to successfully challenge for that top spot. "First Man" will be the third directorial effort from Damien Chazelle, who has made quite a name for himself after his first two films, "Whiplash" and "La La Land," both got best picture nominations, with "La La Land" winning best picture for about 15 seconds before "Moonlight" was revealed as the real winner. And now Chazelle is looking to go three for three with best picture nominations as he brings back Ryan Gosling to tell the story of Neil Armstrong landing on the moon. "First Man" had a successful festival run, coming out with an 89 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. If general audiences connect with it on the same level that festival audiences have, the movie could be in for a long run at the box office. Although a different genre, Chazelle's "La La Land" ended with $151.1 million domestically.
 
After getting treated to "The House with a Clock in Its Walls" towards the end of September, family audiences will get another family-friendly Halloween film in Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween. The "Goosebumps" series began in 1992 with author R.L. Stein writing 62 books in the original series from 1992 to 1997 with several other spin-off series also existed for a total of 231 books that have sold a total of over 400 million copies. The first "Goosebumps" movie came out in 2015 and made $80.1 million domestically after opening to $23.6 million. A safe prediction would be to put "Goosebumps 2" in a similar range, meaning it would be in a close competition with "First Man" for the best new opener of the week as both try to push "Venom" and "A Star is Born." The specific plot for this one revolves around two boys finding the book titled "Haunted Halloween," which in turn releases the popular doll named Slappy, who in turn releases all sorts of monsters in the world. The two boys, along with their sister and Jack Black's R.L. Stein work to stop Slappy before things get too crazy. Now given reaction to the marketing hasn't exactly been on fire, it wouldn't be surprising to see this fall a bit short of the first movie, especially with the level of competition at the moment.

Set to pull up in the caboose of all this is the final wide release of the weekend, Bad Times at the El Royal. This movie is a mystery/thriller wherein seven strangers all coincidentally meet up at a rundown hotel called El Royal, only to find out that something fishy is going on, making it a bit like "Clue," except with a stronger edge to it, as if Quentin Tarantino directed "Clue." The movie has quite the large cast that is headlined by Jeff Bridges, Cynthia Erivo, Dakota Johnson, Jon Hamm, Cailee Spaeny, Lewis Pullman and Chris Hemsworth as our seven strangers that meet up. The director here is not Quentin Tarantino, but Drew Goddard, who has done a lot of work with writing and screenplays, and is most notably known for creating the Netflix series "Daredevil." As far as his theatrical directorial efforts, the only other movie he directed was "The Cabin in the Woods" in 2012, which opened to $14.7 million. That is about the range where tracking has this movie opening, although if the reception is strong with general audiences, it could end up sneaking up on "Goosebumps 2." The movie debuted at Fantastic Fest in late September and had fairly good reception as it a 78 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes, which is a good early sign.

October 19th - 21st-

The third juggernaut of the month that also has a chance at topping the $55.8 million mark that "Gravity" set is Halloween. This has been a franchise that has been around since the original John Carpenter horror classic was released in 1978. The general reaction to every entry in the franchise since the original has been mixed at best, which a lot of the entries being declared as awful. Yet despite that, Hollywood refuses to let this franchise go as this 2018 "Halloween" will be the 11th movie in the franchise and third that is simply titled "Halloween." Prior to the trailer being released, it would've been easy to predict that this movie would be yet another one that gets kicked to the curb and mostly ignored outside the potential for a decent opening weekend that, at best, might come close to the $26.3 million of the 2007 Rob Zombie "Halloween," the current highest in the franchise. But then the trailer came out and blew everyone out of the water as it looked to potentially match the quality of the 1978 original film, erasing every other film in the franchise and attempting to be a direct follow-up to the original, essentially replacing "Halloween II," except for saying that Michael Myers got captured and has spent the last 40 years back in prison.

This idea of a proper follow-up to an extremely popular horror film brings to mind what happened last year with the movie "IT." Ever since the 1986 novel by Stephen King and the ensuing 1990 TV mini-series starring Tim Curry, "IT" had been an extremely popular properly, ruining the careers of real-life clowns ever since. When it finally got a movie adaptation last year, with both an extremely effective marketing campaign and well-liked movie, it shattered records by opening to $123.4 million. That's the power of horror nostalgia and so far "Halloween" has played its cards perfectly with an extremely effective marketing effort that has fans excited. Not only that, but Universal was confident enough to release it at Toronto International Film Festival and Fantastic Fest with the reception being strong as it holds an 85 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, the second highest score behind the original's 93 percent, and the only other movie to even have a fresh score. This suggests that a huge opening weekend is in play as well as a strong run throughout October. Can it come close to "IT"? It might be a bit unfair to expect that. But at this point it seems like an opening close to the $53.8 million opening of last month's "The Nun" is at least what it'll do.

October 26th - 28th-

With "Halloween" set to blow up the box office the previous weekend, and with the Halloween holiday being right around the corner from this final weekend of October, "Halloween" should have no problem repeating at No. 1 at the box office as none of the three new releases look to provide much competition. Of the three, Hunter Killer has the best potential to open highest. This is a fictional and somewhat futuristic war film starring Gerard Butler, Gary Oldman and Common and is about a group of Navy SEALs who have to go over to Russia to rescue the Russian president, who has been captured by his own Defense Minister, with the goal of preventing World War III. Perhaps they are unfair comparisons because they're not quite the same type of movie, but the last two films that Gerard Butler headlined were "Geostorm" last October and "Den of Thieves" this January. Those two movies opened to $13.7 million and $15.2 million. Somewhere in that general ballpark is probably where "Hunter Killer" will fall. Prior to that, Gerard Butler also headlined "London Has Fallen," which opened to $21.6 million. Four very different movies, yes, but all of them being action films of some sort starring Gerard Butler, so the comparisons might not be too crazy.

The final two films are likely to not be much of a blip on the radar, but of those two films Johnny English Strikes Again is the most noteworthy one to mention. This stars Rowan Atkinson as a bit of a bumbling spy in a slapstick heavy comedy and is the third movie in this Johnny English franchise, following "Johnny English" in 2003 and "Johnny English Reborn" in 2011. In 2003, "Johnny English" opened to $9.1 million in the United States while "Johnny English Reborn" fell even smaller, opening to $3.8 million. This suggest that "Johnny English Strikes Again" would be extremely lucky to hit $10 million and might even struggle to get to $5 million. However, stopping at that would be extremely foolish because this is not an American franchise. Despite both movie's low American totals, both "Johnny English" films finished with a worldwide total of $160 million, meaning that 82.5 percent of the first movie's total came from overseas while 94.8 percent of the second movie's total came from overseas, with the United Kingdom unsurprisingly being the highest market for both films. So the American total of this third movie probably means close to nothing in the grand scheme of things, but it's here as a courtesy release for those who care.

The final movie of the weekend comes from Pure Flix and that is Indivisible. This movie is based on the true story of Army Chaplain Darren Turner and the battle scars that war left on them, threatening their marriage. Given that this is a Pure Flix film, the Christian angle of using God to help save their marriage is the big theme here, making this a similar story to the September film "Unbroken: Path to Redemption," which had the advantage of being connected to the popular "Unbroken" film from 2014. Despite that, "Path to Redemption" still couldn't break out beyond the usual Pure Flix release, which doesn't inspire confidence in "Indivisible," which thus looks to fall in line with the other Pure Flix films of 2018, "Samson," "God's Not Dead: A Light in Darkness," "Death of a Nation" and the previously mentioned "Path to Redemption," all of which failed to hit $3 million on their opening weekend. The highest opening weekend for Pure Flix is "God's Not Dead 2," which opened to $7.6 million. It doesn't look like "Indivisible" will get anywhere close to that. Without much awareness at this point, it's possible that "Indivisible" even struggles to get to $2 million.