Movie Preview: July 2019

It was a bit of a rough June at the box office this year as we were once again taught that too many attempted blockbusters packed in so close together is not good news for the individual movies. Movies that ended up as victims in this brutal month included "Godzilla: King of the Monsters" (released the final day of May), "Dark Phoenix," "Men in Black International," "Shaft," "The Secret Life of Pets 2" and "Annabelle Comes Home." Of note, all of those listed are sequels. And even though some of them will ultimately be fine based on their individual budgets, they all vastly underperformed when compared to their predecessors. When the dust settled after all this, it was Disney that remained king yet again with the top two spots in "Toy Story 4," which earned $236.9 million in 10 days, and "Aladdin," which added an additional $151.3 million in June, for a $305.9 million domestic total after opening in May. All this said, even though many of the individual movies failed, they all combined to earn $1.103 billion at the domestic box office, which is the third highest June. The story of July will most likely be a bit different one. While there are a few major titles, there's a lot more breathing room that, in theory, should lead to higher individual results. So let's dive in and take a look!

July 2nd - 7th-

Normally I separate these by weekends, not full weeks, but this time is an exception because there are two movies taking advantage of the whole week of Independence Day, which falls on Thursday this year. The first of those two is Spider-Man: Far from Home, which opens on Tuesday, July 2. In other words, today if you're reading this on the day I posted it. Back in 2017, Sony took a risk by rebooting Spider-Man for a third time with "Spider-Man: Homecoming" following the failure of "The Amazing Spider-Man 2" in 2014. This time around, Sony struck a deal with Marvel that they'd let Spider-Man be a part of the MCU if Marvel helped them make a more well-liked movie. That deal worked wonders as "Homecoming" was a huge hit that has turned Tom Holland into a superstar and a very important part of the Avengers. While "Homecoming" was a very self-referential title, signifying Spider-Man coming back to Marvel, while also referring to the Homecoming Dance in the movie itself, this time Spider-Man wants to get away following the events of "Avengers: Endgame" and just go on vacation with his friends. However, when your name is Spider-Man, escaping responsibility is a tough thing to do, especially when Mysterio is around (but is a good guy?) and Nick Fury needs your help.

Before moving onto the next movie, I wanted to quickly discuss the box office potential for "Far from Home." With "Homecoming" being a very well-liked film and "Far from Home" being the first movie following "Endgame" in the MCU, this is obviously going to be huge. But how huge? As far as the opening weekend goes, that's a bit tricky because of the Tuesday opening, which spreads out the earnings over six days instead of being compacted into three days. So in looking at previous Independence Day openings for some help, the most obvious comparison is back in 2004 with fellow Spider-Man movie "Spider-Man 2." That movie opened on Wednesday, but played well through Monday as the 4th fell on a Sunday. For the 3-day, it opened to $88.2 million, but earned a total of $180.1 million through six days. Those numbers are only helpful when you adjust for ticket price inflation. In which case, "Spider-Man 2" adjusts to a $127.9 million 3-day weekend and a whopping $261.3 million through six days. That would be a huge week for "Far from Home" and maybe it would be unfair to expect those numbers from it, but it would make sense for it to be at least at or near the $200 million mark by the end of Sunday, while continuing to play well throughout July.

Now onto the second movie of the week and that is Midsommer, which opens on Wednesday, July 3. "Midsommer" is director Ari Aster's next film after his debut hit last year in "Hereditary," thus it's had a lot of buzz leading up to it in certain circles. "Hereditary" was a very well-liked film by critics and fans of unconventional, independent horror films. But after a buzzy Sundance release, A24 gave it a wide release, which resulted in A24's highest grossing opening weekend ($13.6 million), but it landed with a D+ Cinemascore, signifying that fans of mainstream, traditional horror were very off-put by the film due to its rather heavy and intense nature. Yet it still held very well, finishing with $44.1 million. That's given A24 the confidence to use the same release strategy with "Midsommer." What is that going to result in? We shall see. Critics are again liking the film as it currently has an 83 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes with 96 reviews counted, but its being described as a very challenging horror film as the main characters venture off into a midsummer Swedish festival, thus it seems like its primed to be another divisive film. But perhaps that could be to the movie's advantage financially as people might want to go see it in order to become part of the conversation.

July 12th - 14th-

Back to a traditional weekend date. Post Independence Day, it's going to be all "Spider-Man: Far from Home" again. Predicting how much it will do in its second weekend is again a bit tricky given the non-traditional release date, but the average second weekend drop for a film in the MCU is 55.7 percent. If "Far from Home" did match the $127.9 million adjusted 3-day release of "Spider-Man 2," applying the average 55.7 percent drop would give it a $56.7 million second weekend. Of note, "Homecoming" experienced the steepest second weekend drop in the MCU at 62.2 percent, but that's because it went up against "War for the Planet of the Apes" in weekend two, along with "Dunkirk" in weekend three. After that bloodbath was over, "Homecoming" stabilized quite a bit and wound up with the MCU's seventh best multiplier, so I wouldn't anticipate "Far from Home" having a similar drop, especially considering the lack of competition this weekend that we'll get into in a second. Rather, "Spider-Man 2" only dropped 48.7 percent, which would equal $66 million for "Far from Home" if it matched that. So somewhere in the $50-70 million range seems about what it should do.

Said range for "Far from Home" is going to be miles ahead of this weekend's two new releases. The movie that actually comes out on top between the two is anybody's guess at this point, but we'll start with Stuber since that one seems to have the most awareness at this point. "Stuber" is the comedy starring Dave Bautista and Kumail Nanjiani. Nanjiani plays an Uber driver who picks up Bautista's character and is dragged into quite the wild night as Bautista plays an LAPD detective on the trail of a terrorist. On paper this seems like a perfect team-up that could be box office gold as Nanjiani has become a huge name following "The Big Sick," while Bautista obviously hails from "Guardians of the Galaxy." The kicker here is that it's not been a good summer for comedies. "The Hustle" ($13.0 million), "Long Shot" ($9.7 million), "Booksmart" ($6.9 million) and "Poms" ($5.4 million) all opened significantly lower than expectations. This could mean two things for "Stuber." One, it could mean we're primed for a breakout comedy hit. There's usually at least one of those each summer. Or two, it could follow in this line of disappointing comedies. Not helping its case is the fact that it opened at South by Southwest in March and thus currently has a 57 percent on Rotten Tomatoes.

Terror in the water is a very popular subgenre of horror at the moment and that'll be our other opening this weekend with the movie Crawl. Now I specifically going a bit broad with my genre description there because this is not a shark movie, but a movie with alligators that show up to hunt people during a category 5 hurricane. If people buy into the monster movie absurdity of it, this could be a decent midsummer hit. In 2016, "The Shallows" opened to $16.8 million while in 2017 "47 Meters Down" debuted to $11.2 million. Both movies were pretty leggy, earning $55.1 million and $44.4 million respectively at the domestic box office. Or we could turn to the other side of this as a comparison. The storm. On that note, "Geostorm" opened to $13.7 million in October 2017. Of course Paramount would love for "Crawl" to end up like last summer's "The Meg," which opened to an astounding $45.2 million, making $145.4 million overall, but that was a situation where all the stars perfectly aligned. Paramount is pushing Sam Raimi pretty strong in the advertising. Notably, Raimi is not the director here. He's just the producer. The actual director is Alexandre Aja, who, for better or for worse, directed 2010's "Piranha 3D," so he's not a stranger to terror in the water.

July 19th - 21st- 

One potential reason why May and June were super crowded while July is more wide open is that studios seem to have decided to avoid opening anywhere close to Disney's The Lion King, as this is the only wide release of the weekend. This continues Disney's series of "live action" reimaginings of their older classics, which, believe it or not, has been met with quite the mixed results at the box office. While "Beauty and the Beast," "The Jungle Book" and "Alice in Wonderland" were major hits, Disney also had to suffer through the likes of "Alice Through the Looking Glass," "Pete's Dragon" and "Christopher Robin," which weren't as successful. And while not remakes of their own property, Disney also failed recently with "A Wrinkle in Time" and "The Nutcracker and the Four Realms." That's why this year was a key year for this phase. Had "Dumbo," "Aladdin" and "The Lion King" all failed, Disney might start second-guessing this plan. On that note, Disney had a very rough start with the failure of "Dumbo" and it wasn't looking good for "Aladdin" initially with the marketing, but the actual film may have saved Disney as "Aladdin" has completely won over audiences with over $300 million domestically through June, while closing in on the $1 billion mark worldwide.

That success seems to be on track to continue as social media tracking for "The Lion King" has been practically off the charts all year. Given that "The Lion King" is arguably Disney's most popular property combined with the strong positive reaction to all of the marketing, some are pegging "The Lion King" to potentially crack the $200 million mark opening weekend, or at least top Disney's current high with these reimaginings, currently held by "Beauty and the Beast" with $174.8 million. Although it's important to not get too married to early tracking as doing so can result in people saying that "Toy Story 4" was a disappointment because it "only" made $120 million, despite that being a franchise high for a Toy Story movie and the fourth highest opening ever for an animated movie. Worldwide "Toy Story 4" has already crossed half a billion and is knocking on the door to $300 million domestically. What a disappointment, right? On that note, anything higher than $100 million should be considered a win for "The Lion King," because, you know, that's a lot of money. And it's pretty much guaranteed to hold strong throughout the rest of the summer. Even though August is rather crowded with titles, there's nothing that'll put a dent in "The Lion King" financially.

July 26th - 28th-

While it seems foolish to open anything in the direct shadow of "The Lion King," there's this thing called counter-programming that should work out here as Quentin Tarantino is set to deliver his 9th film to audiences, that of Once Upon a Time in... Hollywood. This is a rather killer lineup here with the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Kurt Russell, Timothy Olyphant, Dakota Fanning, Luke Perry, Margaret Qualley and Al Pacino teaming up in what should be a rather somber look into retro Hollywood. While some of the leads, like DiCaprio and Pitt, play fictional characters, there's also a bit of historical fiction mixed in with the likes of Sharon Tate and Bruce Lee showing up. Lest one be deceived by the movie's initial teaser, which had a lighthearted, comedic tone to it, one should be reminded that, one, this is Quentin Tarantino, but two, Sharon Tate, Margot Robbie's character in this movie, met a rather unfortunate and brutal demise at the hands of the Manson Family, all of whom are also portrayed in this movie. While Tarantino has stated that this is not specifically about the Manson Family murderers, that does seem to play a big role in this movie in delivering an overall message of how quickly one's luck can change in Hollywood.

And since we have plenty of space with "Once Upon a Time in... Hollywood" also being the only release of this weekend, we might as well dive into the numbers here as well. Of note, if "The Lion King" opens around "Beauty and the Beast," the latter made $90.4 million in weekend two. So Tarantino is looking at the runner-up spot here. But it should be a fairly strong runner-up as the movies are targeting to vastly different audiences. With this being Tarantino's ninth film (or tenth if you count "Kill Bill" Vol. 1 and 2 as two movies), the director has built up quite the loyal fan base thanks to his consistent quality. However, he hasn't had a perfectly spotless track record as his most recent film, "The Hateful Eight," only opened to $15.7 million in its nationwide expansion. However, the two films before that, "Django Unchained" and "Inglorious B-------" opened to $30.1 million and $38.1 million respectively. And it's that "$38.1 million opening of "Inglorious" that should be noted here as that was also a summer release, whereas "Django" was in December where movies open smaller. Given that "Inglorious" was a 2009 release, adjust that number for ticket price inflation and it equals a $45.7 million opening, which is a number that "Hollywood" should be able to reach.