Movie Preview: August 2019

Summer 2019 is winding down. It's certainly been an eventful one that has played out mostly as expected. "Avengers: Endgame" dominated the beginning month, opening the weekend before Hollywood's summer started. Then it was a bloodbath at the end of May and into June with too many titles crowded together as they all avoided the summer's last two major tentpoles scheduled in July that didn't disappoint financially. "The Lion King" led the way with $385.1 million in its first two weeks of release. It was followed closely by "Spider-Man: Homecoming," which opened on July 2 and made $351.0 million during the month. Both movies have already joined the $1 billion club worldwide. Previous months holdovers in "Toy Story 4," "Yesterday," "Aladdin" and "Annabelle Comes" also added decent business, while "Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood" had a solid opening in the final weekend. All this led to a 2019 monthly best $1.287 billion. August 2019 will officially close out the Hollywood summer, although it will be a traditional August, meaning one or two big titles and a whole bunch of filler that won't make a huge impact. Even though box office totals might be sparse for most of these titles, there's still a lot of them on the schedule, so let's go explore them all.

August 2nd - 4th-

The opening weekend of August usually has one final attempted blockbuster positioned to plow through the month with little direct competition. This year Universal won the bidding war on this spot and will release Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw. This is the ninth film in this franchise and first spin-off. Needless to say, it's fairly rare to have a franchise that is nine films in and still going strong, but that's what somehow managed to happen here as "Fast Five" revitalized the franchise as it then drove off into absurdity with the next few films. It's quite amusing to look at this franchise in hindsight, realizing that it started off as a street racing franchise and has now evolved into genetically enhanced super soldiers fighting Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Jason Statham. But yes, that's what's happened. Financially this is headed towards a weekend around $60 million based on Friday estimates, which is significantly off from "Fast & Furious 6" and "The Fate of the Furious," which opened to $97.4 million and $98.8 million respectively, but that's not all that surprising given that spin-offs generally don't perform as well as main franchise films. However, "Hobbs & Shaw" will have the chance of holding well through August, plus international totals should be huge.

August 9th - 11th-

While studios decided to avoid opening anything against "Hobbs & Shaw" in the first weekend, the rest of the month will be quite the blood bath with 15 wide releases over the final four weekends, with the next two weekends having five wide releases each. Given that high quantity, it's hard to predict exactly which one is going to rise to the top of the bunch or what order they'll all end up in, but the current favorite at the moment seems to be Dora and the Lost City of Gold. Dora's biggest challenge here is the fact that a good portion of the summer's hits have been family-targeted films, most from Disney. A lot of parents may have already burned through their movie budget and may not be interested in taking their kids to a live-action "Dora the Explorer" film. However, the cartoon, which began in 2000 and ran for eight seasons and 176 episodes, is popular enough that this could be a fairly decent draw in certain circles. A good comparison here might be 2011's "The Smurfs," which opened at the end of July to $35.6 million. Other comparisons could be "Garfield: The Movie" ($21.7 million) or "Yogi Bear" ($16.4 million) if Dora doesn't quite reach the heights of "The Smurfs." Boosting the movie's appeal is a solid cast that includes the likes of Michael Pena and Eva Longoria.

The next entry on the schedule will have everyone sitting around the campfire telling scary stories with Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, which is essentially a slightly more mature version of "Goosebumps." The movie is based on the trilogy of horror books written by Alvin Schwartz in 1981, 1984 and 1991. Each of the three books contains a series of short horror stories. This movie adaptation sees a group of teens find a book of scary stories wherein in the stories come to life and haunt them, hence the statement that this is a slightly more mature version of "Goosebumps," because that's almost exactly what the 2015 "Goosebumps" film did. "Scary Stories" just has a PG-13 rating rather than the PG rating of "Goosebumps," so the target audience is the teen horror crowd rather than family audiences. "Goosebumps" opened to $23.6 million, which would be a great opening for "Scary Stories" if it was able to match that. However, "Goosebumps" had an October release date and a more popular source material that it was based on, so the current trajectory for "Scary Stories" isn't quite that high. That said, August has had horror breakouts before, like "Don't Breathe" in 2016, which opened to $26.4 million. So a $20 million debut isn't out of the realm of possibilities.

Next up is a movie that could be a late-August sleeper hit and that is The Kitchen. This is a movie based off of the graphic novel of the same name published by DC's Vertigo Comics, which began in 1993 as comics aimed at an adult audience. "The Kitchen" is set in the late-70's Hell's Kitchen, New York City, and is about a trio of women whose mobster husbands have been sent to prison. This causes the wives to decide to pick up where their husbands left off, leading the gangs. The big draw here is the lead cast, which consists of Melissa McCarthy, Tiffany Haddish and Elizabeth Moss, as well as a whole host of supporting cast members. In the director's chair is first time director Andrea Berloff, who was nominated for an Oscar for writing the screenplay of "Straight Outta Compton." So a strong lead cast, a talented female director and a potentially intriguing premise means all the pieces are in play here for this to do well. The only issue here is that awareness doesn't seem to be super high. The first trailer was released a bit late in the game and interest level doesn't seem to be too terribly high. Reviews could help it if they're strong, but perhaps a comparison is last year's similarly themed drama "Widows," which opened to $12.4 million in mid-November.

The fourth film this weekend sees a very similar premise of late with Disney's release of Fox's The Art of Racing in the Rain. It tells the story of Formula One race car driver Denny Swift as he relates his racing to life, marries a girl named Eve, has a child, and all that sort of stuff. Denny is played by Milo Ventimiglia while Amanda Seyfried plays Eve. And narrating Denny's dog is Kevin Costner. Said dog is the movie's main perspective here, which is why this is a very familiar movie after 2017's success of "A Dog's Purpose" led to TWO follow-ups this year, a non-related adaptation from the same author titled "A Dog's Way Home" in January and a direct sequel titled "A Dog's Journey" in May. While "The Art of Racing in the Rain" is not from the author of those three original books, it's quite possible that Fox saw the success of the "A Dog's Purpose" and decided to then adapt the 2008 novel "The Art of Racing in the Rain," written by Garth Stein, into a film. As it turns out, the timing here is off with this being the third dog movie this year as each of the films have had diminishing returns. "A Dog's Purpose" opened to $18.2 million, "A Dog's Way Home" opened to $11.3 million, and "A Dog's Journey" opened to $8.0 million. It's possible that downward trend continues.

Pulling up the caboose this weekend is Bleecker Street's release of Brian Banks. This is a movie based on the true story of football player Brian Banks, who was a promising young linebacker in high school whose dreams and career was derailed when a classmate of his accused him of dragging her into a stairway at their high school and raping her. After verbally committing to play at USC during his Junior year of high school in 2002, Banks was expelled from school in the summer of 2002 due to these allegations. He spent nearly six years in prison and five years on parole before the girl eventually confessed that she had made up the whole story. The movie specifically focuses on his legal fight to overturn the conviction so that he can revive what's left of his life and career. Early theater counts from Box Office Mojo have this set to debut in about 1,500 theaters. Looking at previous football dramas opening in around 1,500 theaters leads to the 2015 movie "My All American," which opened to $1.4 million. Bleecker Street themselves have opened three previous movies in wide release with "Logan Lucky" ($7.6 million - 3,031 theaters), "Megan Leavey" ($3.7 million - 2,023 theaters), and "Unsane" ($3.8 million - 1,956 theaters). All of that suggests an opening around $2-3 million.

August 16th - 18th-

After an exhausting weekend that saw five new wide releases, this third weekend doesn't let up with another five new wide release. They'll be led by The Angry Birds Movie 2, which will get a head start on the weekend by opening on Wednesday, August 14. This sequel comes to us because the first movie was actually quite popular, opening to $38.2 million in summer 2016, making $107.5 million overall domestically. Thus Sony brought the birds back together for a new adventure, which sees the birds being forced to team up with the enemy pigs. The voice cast is again quite large with a host of returning and new voices that include Awkwafina, Dove Cameron, Bill Hader, Danny McBride, Peter Dinklage, Tiffany Haddish, Maya Rudolph, Jason Sudeikis, Sterling K. Brown, Eugenio Derbez, Josh Gad and Nicki Minaj. Now despite the first movie doing well and the large cast here, one has to ask if audiences really wanted an "Angry Birds" sequel, especially since the first movie wasn't exactly well received and the popularity of the app game isn't the same in 2019 as it once was. In a summer of underperforming sequels that no one asked for, "Angry Birds 2" seems like it will fall right into that, perhaps only making around $20 million after looking at various comparisons, such as "Ice Age: Collision Course."

Opening on Friday proper will be the rest of our four releases. Of the bunch, the one that seems like it has the most potential is 47 Meters Down: Uncaged. This is our latest in the recent trend of yearly shark movies, which saw "The Meg" open to a massive $45.4 million at almost this exact time last year. "Uncaged" is certainly not expected to explode to that much money, but it's worth noting that the first "47 Meters Down" was a surprise hit two summers ago. Not only did it open to a decent $11.2 million, but it held extremely well and wound up with $44.3 million domestically. "Uncaged" has a completely different cast and premise, this time following a group of teenage girls who swim to the wrong part of the ocean and get trapped near a hungry shark or two, but the brand name appeal is will still be there and it helps that Johannes Roberts is returning to direct the sequel, meaning a similar tone is likely. Our shark movie from three summers ago was "The Shallows," which opened to $16.8 million. Perhaps "Uncaged" is able to get close to that number. But if not, the first movie only had a production budget of $5.3 million. If the production budget for "Uncaged" is similar, then it's not going to take much to get a profit. An opening anywhere in the teens will be a win here.

Challenging "Angry Birds 2" and "Uncaged" for a spot somewhere in the top five (remembering that "Dora," "Hobbs & Shaw" and "The Lion King" will also be in play) is the latest comedy Good Boys, which is a purposely ironic title because this is a comedy involving a group of kids acting like bad boys. As the official rating says, a rating that is displayed largely in the middle poster, this is rated R for "strong crude sexual content, drugs and alcohol material, and language throughout - all involving tweens." Jacob Tremblay, Brady Noon and Keith L. Williams as three sixth grade boys who try to impress girls, skip class and attend parties. Gene Stupnitsky, writer and producer of several related comedies, is directing this movie in his directorial debut, while Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are on as producers The big question here will be how much do audiences really want to see a group of tweens cussing, doing drugs and partying, because that shock value is the main appeal. Worth noting, this summer has not been nice to comedies at all as "Long Shot," "Poms," "The Hustle," "Booksmart" and "Stuber" all failed, with "The Hustle" being the only one to even crack double digits in its opening. That seems like a bad omen for "Good Boys," which is only getting mixed-at-best reviews.

The next movie on the schedule will be the Sundance film Blinded By the Light. This also follows in our musical-theme trend this summer with "Rocketman" telling the story of Elton John, "Yesterday" imagining a world wherein The Beatles didn't exist, and now "Blinded By the Light" telling the story of a teen in the 1980's inspired by the music of Bruce Springsteen to find his own voice and live the life he wants. All of these were in the works before "Bohemian Rhapsody" absolutely exploded last year with a $51.1 million opening, a lengthy theatrical run, and plenty of awards season love. But said performance was likely a key factor for Warner Bros. picking this one up from Sundance this year, hoping to cash in on the trend. Now given that this is not a biopic like "Bohemian Rhapsody" and "Rocketman," the best comparison here is "Yesterday," which opened to $17.0 million and has held remarkably well. But if we're being honest, The Beatles vs. Bruce Springsteen isn't much of a competition in terms of popularity, so "Blinded By the Light" probably won't open that big. Rather, it would be better to look at the wide expansions of the other two 2019 Sundance films that have hit 1,000 theaters., that being "Fighting with My Family" ($7.8 million) and "Late Night" ($5.3 million).

And finally this weekend we have the latest from director Richard Linklater in Where'd You Go, Bernadette. Given the heavy schedule in terms of quantity, it would make sense for this movie to take the limited release route rather than opening wide initially, especially since that's what normally happens with Linklater films as he's mostly an independent filmmaker, the most well known of which are "Boyhood" and the "Before" trilogy. In fact, the last time a Linklater film opened wide was way back in 2005 with "Bad News Bears." This certainly could end up being a limited release, or at least something that starts in 500-1,000 theaters. However, new distributor United Artists Releasing have released all four of their films this year in at least 2,500 theaters, so we'll see what they end up planning here. Either way, the movie stars Cate Blanchett as a mother who is frustrated with life and decides to completely disappear one day, leaving her daughter Bee, played by Emma Nelson, and her husband Elgin, played by Billy Crudup, to try to figure out what exactly happened to her. Also co-starring in the movie is Kristen Wiig, Judy Greer and Laurence Fishburne among others. The movie was originally scheduled for a May 2018 release date before being pushed back four times.

August 23rd - 25th-

We now enter what has been, historically speaking, one of the lowest parts of the year for the box office, that being the final two weeks of August. Depending on how the dust settles in the previous two weekends, this should set the stage for Angel Has Fallen to take a two-week run at the top of the box office. This is the third chapter in what I suppose can be called the Fallen trilogy, the previous two movies being "Olympus Has Fallen" and "London Has Fallen." Gerard Butler returns as Secret Service Agent Mike Banning, who helped save the White House and London from terrorist attacks in the previous two movies. Morgan Freeman also returns as Allan Trumbull, this time as President of the United States, after being Speaker of the House and Vice President respectively in the last two movies. President Trumbull is about to make Agent Banning director of the Secret Service when an attempted assassination happens, which ends up being blamed on Agent Banning. "Olympus" was a surprise hit in 2013, opening to $30.4 million in 2013. "London," however, didn't perform as well, only opening to $21.6 million. A likely downward trend should continue as this could be yet another sequel that no one asked for that underperforms this summer. Somewhere around $15 million is likely.

Next up is the Kendrick Brothers returning for their latest faith-based film Overcomer. This will be the sixth movie from the two of them, following "Flywheel," "Facing the Giants," "Fireproof," "Courageous" and "War Room." In each case, Alex Kendrick has directed while Alex and Stephen Kendrick have written the screenplay. Creativity and originality are not necessarily the brothers' forte, but rather they are quite good at presenting simple, straightforward films about how having faith in Christ will turn your life around and their target Christian audience has often eaten them up. "Overcomer" will most likely be no different, but the story this time around follows Alex Kendrick playing a basketball coach who is forced to coach cross country, even though only one girl is there to join the team. In terms of the box office potential, each of these Kendrick Brothers films has seen an uptick in performance, with "War Room" breaking out to a $67.8 million total after opening to just $11.4 million. In fact, "War Room" opened in second place in its first weekend, but ended up taking the crown in its second weekend after a strong hold. That could happen again if "Angel Has Fallen" disappoints, but Christian films are often impossible to predict, so we'll have to wait and see what happens.

If "Angel Has Fallen" and "Overcomer" fail to make much of an impact this weekend, the horror thriller Ready or Not is waiting in the wings to play spoiler. Out of the three films, this is the one does seem to be getting the most aggressive marketing push, although how that'll translate is yet to be seen. This comes via Fox Searchlight, who hasn't opened a film higher than $10 million since 2009. They usually play the limited release game. However, this is a different era in Fox Searchlight with Disney now being in charge, so perhaps that changes things. "Ready or Not" begins with a very happy marriage that goes south when the bride learns that there's a family tradition with her groom's family where they have to play a game at midnight whenever someone new joins the family. This leads to them playing a deadly game of Hide and Seek where all the family are trying to hunt and kill the bride and she's trying her best to escape. In terms of late August horrors, while many of them end up being throwaway films that are completely forgotten about two weeks later, this is also the exact weekend where "Don't Breathe" broke out to $26.4 million in 2016? Could this be this year's "Don't Breathe"? Perhaps that would be too optimistic, but this is one to keep an eye on.

August 30th - September 2nd-

This final weekend of of August is also Labor Day weekend, with Labor Day falling on September 2. Historically speaking, Hollywood avoids this weekend like the plague when it comes to new releases. However, recent years has seen films already in theaters have great holds over the four-day holiday weekend as people choose to catch up on whatever summer film they missed out on. That means whatever movie opened in first place last weekend is most likely going to also be in first place this weekend, unless "Angel Has Fallen" and "Overcomer" end up being close enough together for them to switch spots as "Overcomer" is almost certainly going to have the better hold. Or maybe there's another surprise in store for us this month that dominates, like "Crazy Rich Asians" last year, which wasn't hardly on my radar when I did my August 2018 preview. As far as the new releases, I was all set to discuss "PLAYMOBIL: The Movie," which WAS on the schedule for this weekend when I started typing this post earlier in the week, but when I went to finish the post it had vanished. Turns out STX has moved it to December 6 in hopes to get more of an audience during the holidays, which might be smart because it wasn't going to make anything this weekend.

That leaves this weekend especially empty as I'm not even positive that the remaining two wide releases that Box Office Mojo (which I always go by with this monthly post) has listed as opening wide at this point are actually opening wide. But let's quickly discuss them anyways. The first of these two is Sundance release Don't Let Go. This got mixed reaction from Sundance as a sci-fi horror/thriller film wherein a man gets a phone call from his dead niece after her whole family got murdered. Turns out the phone call is from his niece two years in the past, giving him the opportunity to solve the murder, tell her the information, and change the future. Best case scenario is that this performs like "Searching" last year, another Sundance thriller release, that made $6.1 million in its nationwide expansion on Labor Day weekend. The other film is Saaho, an action/thriller from India from the distribution company Yash Raj. There's actually a lot of these Indian/Bollywood films that open in around 300 theaters, yet get an extremely high per theater average. Last year Yash Raj had three films earn over $1 million opening weekend in just around 300 theaters with "Zero," "Thugs of Hindostan" and "Race 3." I'm guessing that's what "Saaho" is as opposed to a wide release.