April 5th - 7th-
The other big release of this weekend is our first major horror film of the month in Stephen King's Pet Sematary. This began as a novel by Stephen King, which was written in 1983, and was adapted into a film six years later in 1989. The film got mixed reaction, but was a commercial success as it earned $57 million domestically off of a $11 million budget. It was successful enough to spawn a sequel in 1992, which was very poorly received and did a lot worse as the box office, only earning $17 million. The general idea with this story centers around a family who lives close to a cemetery (misspelled "sematary") that has a lot of weird mojo surrounding it. If you bury something there, it will come back to life, but in messed up zombie form. And of course this is a Stephen King story, so there's bound to be plenty of weird twists that those familiar with the book or previous movies are already well aware of. The movie opened at South by Southwest Film Festival in March to solid reviews, meaning it's primed for a good opening, perhaps the second best opening for a Stephen King adaptation, behind only the mega $123 million opening of "IT." The 2007 film "1408" currently holds the second best spot with $20.6 million. The biggest problem with "Pet Sematary" is that it's opening so close to "Us" that the two movies might eat at each other's audience a bit.
The final wide release of the weekend is a more moderate release, hitting about 1,600 theaters, and that is STX Entertainment's release of Best of Enemies, which is not to be confused with the 1933, 1961 and 2015 films of the same name. This is based on the book "Best of Enemies: Race and Redemption in the New South" by Osha Gray Davidson, which is about exactly what that subtitle infers. It's the true story of the feud between civil rights activist Ann Atwater and Kl Klux Klan leader C.P. Ellis until a court-ordered school desegregation order in 1971 forces them to work together. The lack of adult-targeted dramas in the market right now might help this movie be a sleeper hit. It also has the star power of Taraji P. Hensen and Sam Rockwell leading the way. This is the type of movie that seems prime for an awards push based on that premise and said star power, but an April release instead of a fall release suggests STX didn't have much faith in it in that regards and the lack of reviews two days before release is also a bit troubling. This isn't the type of movie where people rush out to see, so it's set for a debut somewhere in the single-digit millions, but whether or not it ends up on the high end or low end of that range will depend on how people respond to it.
April 12th - 14th-
Perhaps the higher profile release of the bunch will be the R-rated reboot of Hellboy. As the second comic book release of the month, "Hellboy" seems to be the one in the most trouble. "Shazam!" itself might be in a bit of a tough spot in being between "Captain Marvel" and "Avengers: Endgame" on the schedule. So "Hellboy" being positioned between "Shazam!" and "Avengers: Endgame" seems to be an exponentially worse spot. There's been two "Hellboy" movies released in theaters previous, neither of which did that well anyways. The 2004 "Hellboy" film opened to $23.2 million, earning $59.6 total, while the sequel, "Hellboy II: The Golden Army," opened to $34.5 million, earning $75.9 million total. So yeah, not great totals. But there has been a strong cult following of these two films that has been clamoring for a third film for a long time now, but said fans were hoping director Guillermo del Toro would return with star Ron Perlman, neither of which is happening here. This comes from director Neil Marshall and stars David Harbour from "Stranger Things" as the title character. The R-rating could separate it a bit from the other two comic book movies this month. Or it could also completely alienate fans who were already upset at this reboot instead of sequel idea.
If "Hellboy" does tank hard at the box office, don't be surprised if it's actually beaten at the box office for the runner-up spot by the new Will Packer produced comedy Little. Oddly enough, this will be the second movie of the month along with "Shazam!" to take inspiration from the 1988 Tom Hanks movie "Big," wherein a teenage kid makes a wish to be made big and then wakes up the next day in an adult body. Or maybe we should say "Big" takes inspiration from "Shazam!" since those comics came out first? Either way, to have both of these movies come out this month is an interesting coincidence. "Little" takes the inspiration from "Big" and flips it on its head as an adult woman gets transformed into her younger self and thus has to figure out how to move forward from there. The movie doesn't have a whole lot of star power, with Regina Hall from "Girls Trip" being the biggest name here. And this is only the second directorial feature from Tina Gordon, whose only previous movie was the 2013 film "Peeples." But the premise is what might grab people's attention. And producer Will Packer has a great track record with his opening weekends as 12 of the 17 films he's produced have opened above $20 million, with this February's "What Men Want" barely missing that mark with $18.2 million. So the trends there highly favor "Little" to do well.
Next up for the weekend is the latest stop-motion animation film from Laika, Missing Link. Stop motion is a subgenre of animation that is never super popular with mainstream audiences for some reason, regardless of studio. The highest grossing stop motion film domestically is "Chicken Run" with $106.8 million and that's the only film that has cracked the $100 million mark. That said, Laika has been consistently in the mid-range mark as they've put out some well liked films with their previous four films being "Coraline," "ParaNorman," "The BoxTrolls" and "Kubo and the Two Strings." This latest film of theirs in "Missing Link" continues an interesting trend of animated movies with Yetis in them. Last year we had "Smallfoot" and later this year we'll also have "Abonimable." The movie stars Hugh Jackman as an explorer who's trying to find this Bigfoot. When he does, Mr. Link, as the the Bigfoot's name is, requests that Hugh Jackman helps him find his own kind. So the two of them, along with a few others, begin the adventure. All of Laika's films have opened in the $12-17 million range. With this one not receiving quite as much buzz, it's probably going to end up on the lower end of that range.
The final wide release of the weekend is Aviron's release of the teen romance drama After. This is based on the 2014 novel of the same name written by Anna Todd and stars Josephine Langford as a new college student named Tessa who falls for a "bad boy" going by the name Hardin Scott, played by Hero Fiennes-Tiffin. Both of these leads are fairly new faces. Langford has only been a few small films while Fiennes-Tiffin played 11-year-old Tom Riddle in "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince," but not much else. Director Jenny Gage is also only directed two small films, one being a TV movie. So with this movie completely void of star power, the movie's success will rely on fans of the book showing up and/or how hungry teens are for another romance drama shortly after last month's "Five Feet Apart." If this does manage to break out, it's notable that "Five Feet Apart" opened to $13.2 million. If "After" can come close to that mark, it might create quite the log jam as that's a similar range that our other wide releases will be opening to, not to mention the second weekend of "Pet Sematary" in play. However, a more viable comparison might be to a pair of romance dramas from last year in "Every Day" and "Midnight Sun." Those opened to $3 million and $4 million respectively.
April 19th - 21st-
Speaking of movies that could break through, our second wide release opening this weekend is actually titled Breakthrough. This is a Christian film attempting to take advantage of the Easter holiday, which falls later this year on April 21. There's a lot of these Christian films that come out every year and most of them open quite small as they're only able to attract the niche Christian audiences. However, there's usually one or two of them that manage to do well and, outside being the only Christian film to open around Easter this year, a reason to believe in this one is that it doesn't come from one of our smaller Christian studios. This is being distributed by Fox. Which equals Disney now, I suppose. The last time Fox released a Christian film was "Son of God" and that opened to $25.6 million in 2014. Other similar titles from major studios taking on Christian films include "Heaven is for Real" ($22.5 million), "I Can Only Imagine" ($17.1 million), "The Shack" ($16.2 million), "Miracles from Heaven" ($14.8 million) and "Risen" ($11.8 million). The premise behind "Breakthrough" surrounds a young boy fighting for his life after falling through the ice and being trapped in the water for 15 minutes and having no pulse for 45 minutes. It's worth noting that this does open on a Wednesday, which could mute the actual three-day total a bit.
The third and final wide release of the weekend is the Penguins, the latest documentary from DisneyNature. This is pretty simple. It's a documentary about penguins. Specifically the trailers suggest that the movie follows a penguin named Steve. DisneyNature has been doing these documentaries since 2009 when they released "Earth." They started releasing them yearly, but recently it's been more like every other year. After "Earth" they released "Oceans," "African Cats," "Chimpanzee," "Bears," "Monkey Kingdom," and "Born in China." All of them have opened shortly before or on Earth Day, which is April 22. This year, that's the Monday after this opens. As far as the box office goes, "Penguins" will also be opening on Wednesday the 17th with "Breakthrough," meaning it'll have a five-day weekend to start things off, which again might mute the three-day numbers. The highest DisneyNature opening was "Chimpanzee" with $10.7 million in 2012. The three after that have opened to $4.8 million, $4.6 million and $4.8 million. So that's an easy number to pin "Penguins" at. And perhaps maybe a tad bit lower if we're stretching things out for the five-day weekend.
April 26th - 28th-
On the financial side of things, it's no secret that this is set to make a whole bunch of money. But how high can it go? When tickets went on sale the other day, it shattered the opening day record for ticket sales in the first 24 hours, which was previous held by "Star Wars: The Force Awakens." In fact, the surge to buy tickets as fast as possible was so crazy that many ticket sites crashed and others ended up having long waiting lines for the sale to go through that normally doesn't happen for online ticket purchasing. The easy number to throw out here is the $257 million that "Infinity War" opened to last April, which set a new opening weekend record, previously held by "The Force Awakens" with $247 million. Logically speaking, there's only so many theaters in the country, so the number of seats available is not an infinite number. But how many screens will theaters put this on in order to push that number to the highest possible limit? One might also think that the massive 182 minute run time here (3 hours 2 minutes) might somehow effect things, but that might come to play with repeat viewings rather than the opening weekend rush. A safe bet here might be $260-265 million, but is it possible that "Endgame" becomes the first to open north of $300 million?
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