Movie Preview: December 2019

A busy month it has been for yours truly, allowing not as much time for blogging as I normally like. However, even though the calendar says the month is halfway over, thus making the idea of a movie "preview" sound a little silly, it's worth noting that we're only into the second weekend of the month given the fact that the month started on a Sunday and I included that day in my final weekend of November. Thus the first weekend of December was the 6th through the 8th, which only had one new wide release anyways, and that one was a historical bomb. So I'm not actually that far behind. As far as a recap of November, it was a great month if your name was Disney as they owned the top two spots with their own "Frozen 2," which will continue to dominate through the holiday season, and Fox's "Ford v. Ferrari." If your name wasn't Disney, life wasn't as wonderful as three different studios all failed to reinvigorate previous franchises, with "Terminator: Dark Fate," "Charlie's Angels" and "Doctor Sleep" all being mostly dead on arrival. Moving forward, Disney has already crossed $10 billion worldwide in 2019, with six billion films so far (counting "Frozen 2"). And this little thing called Star Wars hasn't even come out yet. So let's explore what Star Wars month has to offer!

December 6th - 8th-

As I mentioned in my introductory paragraph, there was only one new wide release in the first weekend of December and it was the historically bad release of PLAYMOBIL. Just how bad was it? Well, STX opened "PLAYMOBIL" in 2,337 theaters and it only managed $656,530. That's the fourth worst opening weekend for a movie that opened in at least 2,000 theaters. The winner of the worst opening is the 2012 release of "The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure," which could only muster up 443,901 in 2,160 theaters. Right behind it is "Delgo" ($511,920) and the 10th Anniversary release of "Saw" ($650,051). So what went wrong with "PLAYMOBIL"? A lot of things. First off, they were trying to cash in on the success of the LEGO Movie franchise, which was bad timing given the underwhelming total of "The LEGO Movie 2" earlier this year. The other big problem is that the studio that initially held the rights went bankrupt, so STX bought the rights early in the year and then bounced the movie all over the schedule before finally settling on this weekend, which was an awful decision given the presence of "Frozen 2." Other major factors for this movie's failure was a lack of promotion, leading to a lack of awareness, as well as a general disinterest. Bad reviews were the icing on the cake.  

December 13th - 15th - 

This second weekend of December is when the party really gets started as three new wide releases hope to get a jump on the holiday season, with Jumanji: The Next Level easily leading the way. Two years ago, Sony made the rather risky move to reboot the classic 1995 film "Jumanji," which was led by the late, great Robin Williams. The idea wasn't well received initially, but "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle" ended up getting nearly unanimous praise, which led to an incredibly lengthy backloaded run at the box office as word continued to get out that it was actually a movie well worth seeing. The result was a $404.5 million reward for Sony, making it one of their highest grossing films. So of course they put together a sequel as fast as possible, leading to "Jumanji: The Next Level" just two years later. With this sequel, Sony is using the philosophy of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" as "The Next Level" follows the same exact formula as "Welcome to the Jungle," bringing back all of the lead stars, including Dwayne Johnson, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Karen Gillan and Nick Jonas, while also adding the likes of Awkwafina, Danny DeVito and Danny Glover to the mix. The final results seems to be quite positive so far as it's currently headed for an opening weekend north of $50 million.

Clint Eastwood is also back in the race with his latest film Richard Jewell. When it comes to build-up and anticipation, this movie ended up being more of a late starter as the movie really didn't have much buzz and awareness until fairly recently. If Warner Bros. wanted to give this a real awards season push, they would've released it in the festival circuits to help build buzz. Instead, they decided to push "The Goldfinch" and "Motherless Brooklyn," which failed miserably. "Richard Jewell" is movie that tells the story of the 1996 Centennial Olympic Park bombing that killed one person and injured 111 people, with another person later dying of a heart attack. As bad as this was, the event could've been a lot worse had a security guard, Richard Jewell, not discovered the bomb and cleared a lot of people out of the way. This movie focuses heavily on the other part of the story where the media reported Richard Jewell as a potential suspect in the bombing, which ruined his image. The portrayal of the media in this has sparked quite a bit of controversy as the movie is seen by some as an anti-media or anti-journalism piece from Old Man Eastwood. Controversy often sparks curiosity, but in this case, "Richard Jewell" is looking to just scratch past $5 million on the weekend.

In worse condition is the Christmas horror film Black Christmas. Christmas and horror are genres of film that usually don't mix together too often, meaning "Black Christmas" takes up a decent percentage of this crossover given that this is the third one to be released. The initial "Black Christmas" was released in 1975 and although it didn't necessarily break the bank at the box office, it became a cult classic and is often seen as one of the first slasher films and one of the inspirations behind John Carpenter's "Halloween" a bit later in the decade. It was remade in 2006 and now again this year. Each iteration of "Black Christmas," all three of which share the exact same title, involve some sort of combination of sorority sisters getting stalked and killed by a mysterious killer around Christmas time. Given that it's been a while now since there was a breakout horror film (perhaps since "IT: Chapter Two" given the underwhelming performance of "Doctor Sleep") combined with the slightly unique idea of a Christmas horror film, "Black Christmas" was thought to be a potential breakout film, but it's looking to miss out on $5 million instead of matching 2015's "Krampus," which opened to $16.2 million. Instead, it's a lot closer to 2006's "Black Christmas," which opened to $3.7 million.

December 20th - 22nd- 

I certainly don't need to inform you that a Star Wars movie is coming out this weekend as you all were well aware of that. But nevertheless, it's time to now discuss Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. After 40+ years in the making, the nine-movie story arc that George Lucas had in mind will finally be fully realized as the Skywalker saga will officially come to an end... for now. I mean, this is Disney. You've gotta think that they'll eventually decide to do an Episode X, XI and XII. Because why not? Star Wars is definitely not coming to close anytime soon. There's going to be a lot of new Star Wars content on Disney+ as well as the beginning of some sort of new theatrical trilogy in December 2022. Nevertheless, "The Rise of Skywalker" will see JJ Abrams do something he often doesn't do. Finish something he started. Even if there will be new Star Wars content for the rest of time, this movie could see the conclusion of the story arcs of Rey, Finn, Poe, Kylo Ren and the rest of the new gang. Somehow Emperor Palpatine will also play into this while Billy Dee Williams is also set to reprise his role as Lando. While the lid is being held very tight on specifics,, JJ Abrams has nevertheless hinted at the idea that this is going to be pays tribute to all previous Star Wars films.

Before we get into the other two movies of the weekend, an analysis this movie's box office potential is in order. We'll find out really soon what this will actually be, but it goes without saying that this is going to be another huge hit for Disney. That said, some fairly narrow-minded individuals might look at the fact that "The Last Jedi" fell off quite a bit from "The Force Awakens," which was then followed by the financial failure that was "Solo," and conclude that people are sick of Star Wars, thus resulting in yet another drop off for "The Rise of Skywalker." However, history of Star Wars seems to disagree with this idea. While it is true that "The Last Jedi" fell off quite a bit from "The Force Awakens," so did "The Empire Strikes Back" and "Attack of the Clones" when compared to their respective first movie in the trilogy. In fact, without throwing a whole bunch of numbers in your face, all three of our second movies in a Star Wars trilogy fell about nearly the same rate as each other. In both previous cases, the third film significantly improved upon the second movie, again at about the same rate. While "The Rise of Skywalker" isn't guaranteed to follow this trend, it nevertheless suggests it may be looking at a final domestic total in the range of $675-725 million.

With Star Wars out of the way, we turn our attention to two pieces of attempted counter-programming here, with the first of these two being the not-so-highly-anticipated movie adaptation of Cats. The general feeling here around "Cats" is one of confusion and perplexity as both trailers have a large percentage of dislikes. However, it is worth noting that movie musicals are currently more popular than they have been in many years. The Christmas holiday has worked very well for several of these, with the likes of "The Greatest Showman," "La La Land," "Into the Woods" and "Les Mis" being some of the big examples from this decade. With this in mind, it makes sense to continue to mine this genre and come up with other musicals to bring to the big screen. When we scroll through the list of the longest-running Broadway musicals, "Cats" lands at No. 4, behind only "The Phantom of the Opera," "Chicago" and "The Lion King." So if it's that popular, why not try to bring it to the big screen? However, even the biggest advocates of the Broadway musical will still contend that this is not necessarily a musical that translates well into the big screen. Thus this is a big risk that they're putting forward. Will enough people take the "Cats Challenge" for this risk to pay off?

While it can be argued as to whether or not "Cats" will be able to successfully counter-program Star Wars or not, it does appear that Bombshell is set to provide a legit option during the holiday season for the small percentage of humans that are not interested in seeing the Star Wars finale or people who are searching for another movie to see during the holidays after already having seen Star Wars. Unlike "Richard Jewell," "Bombshell" is a movie that is getting legit awards season buzz, despite not having taken the traditional festival around for awards season hopefuls. This is a movie that stars Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman and Margot Robbie and centers around the Fox News scandal where several women decided to step forward and expose Fox News CEO Roger Allies for sexual assault. Roger Allies resigned from Fox News in July 2016 because of this and passed away next year. "Bombshell" has already received plenty of awards recognition with Theron and Robbie picking up Golding Globe nominations while Theron, Robbie and Kidman all got SAG nominations. Are Oscar nominations next for at least one or two of these ladies? It's worth noting that this movie is opening in limited release before it's nationwide release and is so far looking at a very healthy opening.

December 25th - 29th-

Christmas is always a very lucrative time of the year for the box office and many of the previous movies already discussed in this preview will certainly do very well during the week of Christmas. But Christmas Day, which falls on a Wednesday this year, adds two more movies into the mix, both of which should to fairly well. The first of this is Little Women, which is obviously targeting the female audience and, along with "Bombshell" should provide an excellent bit of counter-programming. "Little Women" has a very long history, which dates all the way back to the 1860's with the publishing of the original novel by Louisa May Alcott and has since had way too many adaptations to count. Even though this has been a movie that has been done quite often, this latest adaptation is set to be perhaps one of the more lucrative adaptations. This comes from director Greta Gerwig, who is fresh off major success with "Lady Bird" in 2017. For "Little Women," she brings along "Lady Bird" star Saoirse Ronan with her, while also having Emma Watson, Florence Pugh, Laura Dern, Meryl Streep, Timothee Chalamet, and more on board as well. This combination of star power, directing prowess, a large built-in fan base, and strong early reviews should help this be a solid hit.

While there will be plenty of major limited releases and expansions this Christmas season from movies hoping to garner awards season buzz, for the sake of simplicity I've decided to limit these posts to wide releases coming out, which means the final movie I'll talk about is the animated movie from Blue Sky in Spies in Disguise. While "Frozen 2" will most certainly still be doing quite well during the week of Christmas, there is enough room for "Spies in Disguise" to succeed, especially since plenty of families have already seen "Frozen 2" and may be looking for additional options during Christmas. "Spies in Disguise" brings along the star power of Will Smith and Tom Holland, who voice a unique buddy comedy duo consisting of a young scientist and a prestigious detective who has been transformed into a pigeon by said young scientist. The movie is loosely based on the 2009 animated short "Pigeon Impossible." While Blue Sky hasn't ever reached the heights of other major animation studios like Pixar, Disney or DreamWorks, they have nevertheless been able to produce a decent string of mid-range successes. In December 2017, "Ferdinand" survived well in the face of "The Last Jedi" to the tune of $111 million, which suggests "Spies in Disguise" is in good shape.