Movie Preview: January 2019

Another year has come and gone as we all officially said goodbye to 2018 at the beginning of this week. In terms of the box office, 2018 finished in record-breaking fashion, earning $11.8 billion at the domestic box office, topping 2016's previous record. Although it is worth noting that this was partially due to the constantly increasing ticket prices, that averaged out at $9.14 per ticket in 2018. In terms of tickets sold, 2018 is nowhere close to the top of the list, but it was still a solid year overall, especially if your name is Disney, who earned $3.1 billion of that overall total, which was 26 percent of the market share. The end of 2018 also means there's a whole lot of new movies to look forward to in 2019, meaning my giant 2019 movie preview is on its way very soon. But before I get to that, it's first time to take an in depth look specifically at the month of January, which has gained a reputation of being notoriously bad for movies. There's plenty of legitimate reasons for that as its not an ideal month for studios to release a new film. But there's at least one movie this month in "Glass" that will be going against the trend as well as a handful of other films that will try to sneak a few quick bucks out of audiences, so let's dive in and explore all of those titles coming our way this month.

January 4th - 6th- 

The first weekend of January will mostly be dominated by holiday holdovers, which is always the case for this weekend. That means "Aquaman" is set to three-peat at top with "Mary Poppins Returns," "Bumblebee" and "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse" all looking at solid totals. Sneaking in somewhere in that mix will be the lone new arrival, Escape Room. This is a horror film where a group of people get stuck in a sadistic game of sorts where they have to escape from room to room or else die. The first person to escape the whole thing gets rewarded with $1 million.  Putting quality aside, January has been a solid month for horror films as its become tradition to start the year out with a new horror film. This has been the case ever since "The Devil Inside" opened to $33.7 million in the inaugural weekend of 2012. Hollywood took note of that and it's worked decently well ever since. Other success stories include "Texas Chainsaw 3D" ($21.7 million in 2013), "Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones" ($18.3 million in 2014) and "Insidious: The Last Key" ($29.5 million in 2018). Without the brand name recognition, "Escape Room" isn't likely to hit quite that high, which is why 2016's "The Forest" ($12.7 million) might be the best comparison here.

January 11th - 13th-

The second weekend of January looks to be a competitive one as "Aquaman" is poised for a fourth weekend around $12-15 million. Is that enough to sneak in a fourth straight win at the box office? Could "Mary Poppins" returns hold well and swap places with "Aquaman"? Or is there a new title that could spoil the fun for both movies? If the latter is true, the most likely candidate is A Dog's Way Home. This is a semi-sequel to the 2017 January movie "A Dog's Purpose," which bucked a huge wave of controversy to an $18.2 million opening weekend and a solid hold after that. "A Dog's Purpose" followed the story of a dog, narrated/voiced by Josh Gad, who kept getting reincarnated until he eventually found his way back to his original owner, who was a lot older. "A Dog's Way Home" doesn't follow the same story or characters, but it has the same style of storytelling and is also based on a book by W. Bruce Cameron, the author of the book "A Dog's Purpose," who has also helped with the screenplay of both movies. This time around, a dog manages to get lost from her owner and travels 400 miles in an effort to return. Fans of "A Dog's Purpose" will likely show up for this follow-up movie, but will enough of them show up to help this match the first movie's opening?

A key expansion this week that I briefly mentioned in last month's preview is the Ruth Bader Ginsburgh biopic On the Basis of Sex. The movie opened in 33 theaters on Christmas Day and made $686,355 on the ensuing opening weekend. Through January 3, it has amassed $2.1 million, a decent run for a limited release film. On this second weekend of January, it is set to expand to around 2,000 theaters. 2018 was the year that cinema decided to put Ginsburgh, currently an Associate Justice on the Supreme Court since 1993, in the spotlight as the documentary about her, titled "RBG," was released in May 2018 and made a total of $14.0 million, a solid total for a documentary. In terms of Oscar-hopefuls expanding in January, the most recent comparison here is Steven Spielberg's "The Post," which made $19.3 million in its first weekend of wide release. If "On the Basis of Sex" were to match that number, it could steal the weekend. However, the challenge it will face is that it doesn't have a lot of awards season momentum, nor does it have very strong reviews (70 percent on Rotten Tomatoes). That makes it likely that it slides into the range other best picture candidates like "Selma" ($11.3 million) and "Extreme Loud and Incredibly Close" ($10.0 million).

Given how hard it is to bet against Kevin Hart when it comes to the box office, another likely contender for the top spot this week is The Upside, which also stars Bryan Cranston and Nicole Kidman alongside Hart. Cranston plays a rich quadriplegic while Hart plays an unemployed man with a criminal record who gets hired to be his caretaker. If that plot sounds familiar, it's because it's the third remake of "The Intouchables" after the Indian film "Oopiri" and the Argentinian film "Inseparables." "The Intouchables" is a French film that was released in 2011 and is currently No. 40 on IMDb's Top 250, so it has quite the solid reputation. How will audiences take to this comedic, American remake of the film. Probably not too well. The movie was actually released at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival to mixed reaction, but got shelved for a while as it was one of the upcoming Weinstein releases during the Harvey Weinstein scandal. It was eventually purchased by STX and dropped in January, which is not a sign of confidence. But Kevin Hart fans often don't care about what critics. He's had plenty of poorly received movies that were box office hits. The issue here might be the competition. Not all of these releases here can break out. 

Later in 2019, fans of Keanu Reeves and the two "John Wick" movies will likely swarm out to "John Wick: Chapter 3," which is easily one of the more highly anticipated movies of 2019. Until then, a few of them might show up to this smaller Keanu movie Replicas as a means to whet their appetite. "Replicas" stars Keanu Reeves as a man who recently lost his wife in a car accident, but instead of moving on with life, he comes up with a way to clone her and bring her back. These types of sci-fi films generally don't work out for the protagonist as we've learned with various movies about artificial intelligence or other related films. Speaking of which, said premise more than likely will feel like a "been there, done that" sort of thing. And given the January release date, any level of average to poor reviews will likely cause audiences to completely ignore this, especially since awareness for this movie isn't necessarily super high at the moment. A best case scenario seems to be an opening similar to "Transcendence," an April 2014 sci-fi film that opened to $10.8 million. But hey, Keanu Reeves has surprised before. "John Wick" wasn't initially thought to be much of anything until reviews went through the roof, which propelled word of mouth. So crazier things have happened.

January 18th - 20th-

While the second weekend of January might prove to be a competitive race, there's absolutely no question that Glass is set to absolutely dominate in the third weekend. In fact, no studio has even dared to compete with "Glass," allowing it to have the weekend all to itself in regards to new releases. In regards to the premise here, the secret is out. "Unbreakable" and "Split," both movies directed by M. Night Shyamalan, are directly connected to each other. "Unbreakable" was released in 2000 and took a more grounded and realistic approach to the superhero genre, starring Bruce Willis as David Dunn, a man who couldn't be broken. This he began to realize when he was the lone survivor of a train wreck that killed the other 131 passengers, yet David Dunn remained unhurt. On the flip side, "Split" tells the story of a very broken individual named Kevin Crumb, played by James McAvoy, who is so psychologically damaged that he has a severe case of Dissociative Identity Disorder wherein he has 23 distinct personalities. "Glass" is the movie where the two of them come together. Building off the goodwill of both movies, the hype for "Glass" is through the roof, meaning that the January opening weekend record, held by "American Sniper" with $89 million, could be in jeopardy.

January 25th - 27th-

The final weekend of January will almost certainly be dominated by "Glass" once again. Even if it were to only hit the $40 million that "Split" opened to, that movie earned $25 million in weekend two, which is a mark that The Kid Who Would Be King is not going to get close to. Along with Robin Hood, King Arthur is a story that Hollywood just cannot let go of. Thus we have yet another iteration of the story. Although this version has a bit of a twist to it as it's about a young kid in the modern age who accidentally grabs the sword of Arthur and brings all sorts of fantasy and fairy tale lore into the lives of everyone around him, both at home and at school. Despite being a very worn-out subject matter, the advantage that this movie has is that its main target audience, that being younger kids, aren't nearly as critical as the adults. If this movie can manage to be a fun, harmless adventure for the younger crowd, it could be a sleeper hit that parents decide to go take their kids to. With very little out there for family audiences in January, that could be a huge advantage. The only problem there is that "The LEGO Movie 2" gets released just two weeks later. Given that it's the parents paying for the tickets, are they going to choose to save their movie for that one instead?

Closing us out for January is Serenity. No, not THAT "Serenity." This has nothing to do with Joss Whedon's "Fire Fly" and the "Serenity" movie in 2005 that finished it off. This is a late January thriller directed by Steven Knight, who's only previous two directed films are "Redemption" and "Locke" in 2013 and 2014 respectively. Neither of those hit wide release. This does have a giant cast, which includes Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Diane Lane, Jason Clarke, Djimon Hounsou and Jeremy Strong. McConaughey is a fisherman who gets approached by his ex-wife, played by Hathaway, who requests that he kill her new husband, played by Clarke. The tone here is that of a neo-noir thriller that could be a sleeper hit given the cast and the premise. But as is the case with a lot of these January releases, the release date doesn't necessarily inspire a ton of confidence, especially since this was initially set to release this past fall, prime time for awards season, but then got pushed back to January. But thrillers have been known to become sleeper hits. While not the perfect match plot-wise, "The Boy Next Door" opened to $14.9 million in January 2015. If it connects, "Serenity" could at least sneak ahead of "The Kid Who Would Be King" this weekend.