Movie Preview: June 2019

The crowded summer continues as we head into the second month of the summer. Despite the heavy competition, May fared pretty well, to say the least, as it became the second straight month in 2019 to cross the $1 billion mark. Holding the fort down was Disney in the top two spots as "Avengers: Endgame" took in another $380 million domestically in May as it inches towards the $850 million mark while "Aladdin" enjoyed a huge $116 million 4-day Memorial Day weekend and has now crossed $180 million after its second weekend. Meanwhile, "Detective Pikachu" took in a respectable $125 million and "John Wick: Chapter 3" is already the highest grossing movie in its franchise with $117 million. These titles helped May to a $1.077 billion domestic total, which is the second largest May ever behind only 2013's $1.141 billion. It wasn't all rainbows and butterflies, though. The jury is still out on "Godzilla: King of the Monsters" and "Rocketman" as they only had one day in May, but both are coming in below expectations. Meanwhile it was a rough month for comedies as "Long Shot," "The Hustle," "Poms" and "Booksmart" all failed to find much of an audience. And now we turn our attention to June, which, again, is extremely crowded. So let's explore everyone's options!

June 7th - 9th-

Starting things off strong is our first major battle of the month. Likely to come out on top is not our latest X-Men movie, but rather The Secret Life of Pets 2. The latest from Illumination already held early screenings via Fandango and has a healthy 71 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes, which is so far in line with the first movie's 73 percent score, suggesting that fans of the first will be satisfied with this sequel. And believe it or not, there was a lot of them. Despite all the success that Illumination has had with the Despicable Me franchise, their highest grossing domestic release does NOT come from there, but is in fact "The Secret Life of Pets," which roared onto the scene with a $104 million opening, finishing with $368 million, just $300,000 ahead of "Despicable Me 2." So this is a sequel that shouldn't be underestimated, especially since Illumination has an excellent track record. Their previous six films, dating back to 2013, have all made at least $260 million at the domestic box office. The big elephant in the room here is that "Toy Story 4" is released just two weeks after "Pets 2," which poses an obvious problem. Although the first "Pets" managed to coexist with another huge Pixar film, opening three weeks after "Finding Dory," so this will be a storyline to monitor.

All previous 11 X-Men movies have opened in first place at the domestic box office. Unless "Pets 2" vastly underperforms, that streak looks to be over as Dark Phoenix will most likely have to settle for the runner-up spot. Now it's been a wild ride for both of Fox's final two X-Men movies with this and "The New Mutants" having been pushed back multiple times. In regards to "Dark Phoenix" specifically, this was initially set for a November 2018 release, then got pushed to February 2019, then again to this current date. The movie will be the second attempt at the popular Dark Phoenix saga, with Simon Kinberg looking to redeem himself after he helped write "X-Men: The Last Stand," which was the first attempt at the Dark Phoenix saga. Kinberg also helped write "X-Men: Days of Future Past" and "X-Men: Apocalypse," so he's no stranger to this franchise, but this will be his first time stepping into the director's chair. As far as the movie's opening, 2013's "The Wolverine" is currently the low mark for X-Men with $53.1 million. Right above that is the original "X-Men" in 2000 with $54.5 million and "X-Men: First Class" with $55.1 million. So that's the mark that "Dark Phoenix" will need to hit to avoid being the lowest opener. All things considered, there's no guarantee it succeeds.

June 14th - 16th-

With at least one major blockbuster every weekend this summer thus far since "Detective Pikachu," history says that something is bound to get lost in the crowd. "Godzilla: King of the Monsters" was already a bit of a casualty of that while "Dark Phoenix" has potential to follow suit. And thus things don't really bode well for this week's attempted blockbuster in Men in Black International. In fairness, though, the previous three movies in the franchise all opened in the $50 million range and became huge summer hits. "Men in Black" was the second highest grossing movie of 1997, behind only "Titanic," while "Men in Black 2" was a top 10 grossing film in 2002. "MIB 3" also fared pretty well in 2012, despite opening in the same summer as "The Avengers" and "The Dark Knight Rises." So that means there's a loyal fan base here that has the potential to show up. But will the lack of Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones keep some of them away? That's quite possible. However, "International" does have Chris Hemsworth and Tessa Thompson teaming up again following "Thor: Ragnarok," so that's a bright spot. But ultimately this one might come down to how well the movie is received. Negative to lukewarm reviews will most likely cause this one to get lost in the shuffle.

Speaking of getting lost in the shuffle, the prospects also don't look super bright for the sequel to 2000's "Shaft," very creatively titled... Shaft. The 2000 "Shaft" was technically a sequel to the trio of 1970's films, which began with the 1971 film... "Shaft." So you see that the creativity level is very high with these movie titles. In their defense, though, the original two sequels do have different titles, "Shaft's Big Score" (1972) and "Shaft in Africa" (1973). But when they did a TV series that lasted only one season, it was also just titled "Shaft." Anyways, "Shaft" (2000) stars Samuel L. Jackson as John Shaft II, the nephew of John Shaft I, who was played by Richard Roundtree in the original films. "Shaft" (2019) brings back both Jackson and Roundtree to reprise their roles, while also adding Jessie T. Usher as John "JJ" Shaft Jr. So we have a family of John Shafts all with the same name, all from movies with the exact same title, uniting in an adult-targeted action film where the Shaft family are all detectives. They are brought together in this film after JJ has a friend of his suspiciously die. "Shaft" (2000) opened to $21.7 million, finishing with $70.3 million. Those seem like good targets for "Shaft" (2019). With a budget of just $30 million, there's less pressure for this one to do huge numbers. 

Although Box Office Mojo currently has Jim Jarmusch's The Dead Don't Die scheduled to open in limited release, I'm covering it here because the heavy marketing push suggests that this may expand wide before too long. It might even start in 600-1,000 theaters. We'll see when official theater counts get released. Regardless, Jim Jarmusch isn't a mainstream film director. Most of his films are smaller indie/art house films, with the biggest titles being "Broken Flowers" (2005), "Only Lovers Left Alive" (2013) and "Paterson" (2016). But this time around he's doing what seems like a more mainstream film as "The Dead Don't Die" is a very self-aware zombie horror/comedy with a very dry sense of humor as the tagline in the trailers is "The road to survival could be a dead end." The movie has a huge cast that includes Bill Murray, Adam Driver, Tilda Swinton, Chloe Sevigny, Steve Buscemi, Danny Glover, Caleb Landry Jones, Rosie Perez, Iggy Pop, Sara Driver, RZA, Carol Kane, Selena Gomez and Tom Waits. The movie debuted back in May at the Cannes Film Festival and that crowd weren't huge fans of the film as it left there with just a 52 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, so this isn't looking like a huge breakout hit, but it could find a bit of a niche audience.

June 21st - 23rd-

As I've presented, June has a lot of uncertainty coming with it, but the one surefire tentpole blockuster hits theaters in the third weekend and that is Pixar's Toy Story 4. After "Toy Story 3" seemed to perfectly wrap up the series, the idea of a "Toy Story 4" wasn't met with universal praise while the reactions to the trailers and the social media engagement have also left a bit to be desired for. All that might become dust in the wind when this hits theaters, though, at least in terms of the box office. Fandango reported that the movie has shattered their pre-sales record for an animated film, previously held by "Incredibles 2," and that movie opened to $182 million. What that specific stat means is uncertain as there's a lot more to a movie's success than early numbers from Fandango, but it does suggest that an opening somewhere between "Finding Dory" ($135 million) and "Incredibles 2" is in play as fans seem generally excited to see Woody, Buzz and co. back in theaters. The nostalgic Disney/Pixar magic may be too much to resist for many people. This time around the adventure seems heavily reliant around a new toy Forky as said custom-made toy has ran away, making Bonnie sad, so the gang is out to find him and bring him home. The return of Bo Peep will also be a major focus.

As crazy as it sounds, "Toy Story 4" isn't the only movie this weekend where toys come to life as we also have the remake of Child's Play hitting theaters this weekend. This release date is mostly certainly intentional as advertising has even paralleled "Toy Story 4," with a recent poster even having what looks like a Woody hat in it. While it may seem foolish to compete directly against "Toy Story 4," with two vastly different audiences, this could provide decent counter-programming. A bigger worry for the movie will be what comes out a few days after with "Annabelle Comes Home," but we'll get to that in a second. While the popular Chucky doll from "Child's Play" certainly didn't invent the idea of killer dolls, it's safe to say it popularized the idea. "Child's Play" was released in 1988 and made $33.2 million on a $9 million budget. It also spawned six sequels, so it has a solid legacy. This remake probably doesn't need much to be considered a success. In fact, an opening above that of the $11.8 million of 1998's "Bride of Chucky" would make this the highest opening weekend of the franchise, although that obviously changes when you adjust for ticket price inflation. That honor goes to "Child's Play 2," whose opening weekend adjusts to $22.8 million with 2019 ticket prices. 

Adult audiences not interested in "Child's Play" will also have another option this weekend if they're not interesting in checking out "Toy Story 4" and that is Luc Besson's Anna. This is Luc Besson obviously trying to replicate the success he had with his 2014 film "Lucy," which opened to $43.9 million and made $126.7 million overall at the domestic box office. "Anna" is obviously coming nowhere near that, especially since awareness doesn't seem super high at this moment. But if it gets a good late push in the next few weeks, some other realistic female-led action movies include last year's "Red Sparrow" ($16.9 million opening) and 2017's "Atomic Blonde" ($18.3 million opening). Although those two movies were led by Jennifer Lawrence and Charlize Theron, respectively. "Anna" doesn't have star power that big. While Helen Mirren, Luke Evans and Cillian Murphy have supporting roles, Sasha Luss plays the lead role of Anna and she's fairly new the acting game, so this movie is going to rely on Luc Besson's name alone or perhaps word of mouth if audiences like it. Going into October 2014, "John Wick" also had minimal buzz, but great reviews lifted it to a $14.4 million opening and a long life afterwards. Luc Besson will probably need a story like that to get this movie noticed.

The final movie of this weekend is something that may be more of a late addition to the wide release schedule and that is Neon's Wild Rose. Neon's most recent wide release was back in March with "The Beach Bum" opening in a moderate 1,100 theaters, earning $1.7 million, so that's probably the range we're looking at here for "Wild Rose," if it gets that much. This could also be the type of movie that starts in 500-600 theaters and relies more on word of mouth to find success rather than a strong opening weekend. So far the buzz seems to be positive. "Wild Rose" premiered back at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival in September and has also hit various other festivals, including this March's South by Southwest Film Festival. Through all that, the movie is currently certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with an 89 percent score following 54 reviews. The follows the recent trend of musical dramas as it stars Jessie Buckley as a young mother who moves from Glasgow to Nashville in an attempt to become a country music star. It's hard to say this movie is simply cashing in on a trend given that it initially premiered before "A Star is Born" last year, but the popularity of this subgenre at the moment could very well be why Neon is going for a wide release here.

June 28th - 30th-

We're not done yet with toys coming to life this month as the final weekend of June also has the horror film Annabelle Comes Home. Concurrently, if your name is Anna, this is also your month (well... maybe) as this is the second movie with the name Anna in the title. "Annabelle Comes Home" is the sixth movie in The Conjuring franchise, not counting April's "The Curse of La Llorona" which was loosly connected, as well as the third Annabelle movie. The other two Annabelle movies, "Annabelle" in 2014 and "Annabelle: Creation" in 2017, opened to $37.1 million and $35 million respectively. Said $35 million opening is actually the lowest in The Conjuring franchise, with the highest being last September's "The Nun," which exploded with $53.8 million. So it's hard to bet against this franchise. "Annabelle Comes Home" unites the Annabelle franchise to its parent franchise as the central location of this movie is the home of Ed and Lorraine Warren after Annabelle is locked in their room of cursed objects. Annabelle of course escapes and starts to haunt the Warren's 10-year-old daughter Judy, played by Mckenna Grace, and her friends. All things considered, it's hard to project this at anything less than $30 million, although a Wednesday release on the 26th could mute its total a bit.

The final wide release of the month is another musical drama with Yesterday. Although not a musical biopic, this movie dives into the music of The Beatles as a young musician has an accident and wakes up in an alternate dimension where The Beatles never existed. Starring in the lead role is Himesh Patel in his feature-length film debut. Prior to this, he's done various work on TV and some shorts, but he'll be hoping that this will be a breakout role for him. Helping him out is a bit of star power with Lily James playing his love interest who becomes upset that he seems to be loving his newly found fame more than her as well as Ed Sheeran playing himself, helping him out with his new music career. Danny Boyle is the director here. Some of his previous work includes the best picture winning film "Slumdog Millionaire" as well as some other highly acclaimed films in "127 Hours" and "Steve Jobs." In the non-Oscar realm, Boyle has also directed films like "The Beach," "28 Days Later..." and "Trainspotting." So this has a lot of key ingredients for success. But I'm thinking a bit smaller for this one given the June release and high competition. Thus a potential comparison that comes to mind is the 2014 film "Jersey Boys," which opened to $13.3 million in June 2014.