Movie Preview: March 2020

The second month of the year has come and gone and, without any sort of "Black Panther" around to light the box office on fire, it was again a normal February, which is historically one of the lowest grossing months of the year. "Sonic the Hedgehog" was the big story this time around as it broke out in a big way, making $123.4 million in the month of February, but that was pretty much it. In second place was "Birds of Prey" with just $77.7 million in February, a total that "Joker" flew past in just three days back in October. "The Invisible Man" ended the month on a good note, but it only had two days to work with when it came to February. Moving onto March, this is the month in recent years that has often signaled the beginning of an early summer. And while this month has the firepower to do so with several big titles, this might be a difficult month to predict. The coronavirus has rightfully dominated the news this year and has just recently began to spread in the United States. Because of this, crowded movie theaters might not be people's favorite place to be. Some studios might decide to postpone certain movies altogether, like was just the case with the latest Bond movie "No Time to Die." With all of that in mind, this is what the current schedule looks like.

March 6th - 8th-

Leading the charge in March will be Pixar with their 22nd animated feature in Onward. After releasing two straight sequels, and four sequels in their last five movies, “Onward” is the first of two original animated films that Pixar is releasing in 2020, with “Soul” currently scheduled for June. Whether or not this is the beginning of a trend for Pixar returning to making more original films is yet to be determined as Pixar has scheduled dates for their slate of films from 2021 to 2023, but hasn’t given any information as to what they are. “Onward” is a movie that takes a page from Netflix’s 2017 film “Bright” as it is a movie full of fantasy characters who now live like normal human beings or animals without magical powers. However, two brothers whose father has passed away find a magical staff and have the opportunity to live with their father for one more day, but the staff only brings back his legs, sending them on a magical adventure. In terms of the box office, Pixar has been on a roll with their recent sequels, three of which have opened above $100 million, but their original films open more down to Earth. Even so, anything less than $50 million for “Onward” would actually be considered a disappointment for Pixar standards, even when it does come to their original films.

Continuing on that financial side of things real quick for “Onward” before moving onto our other film of the week. We’ll find out here really soon exactly what “Onward” is going to do, but the last two Pixar films that were released were 2017’s “Coco” and 2015’s “The Good Dinosaur.” Neither would make the perfect apples-to-apples comparison due to their release on a Wednesday during the week of Thanksgiving, but “Coco” had a three-day opening of $50.8 million and a five-day opening of $72.9 million. “The Good Dinosaur,” Pixar’s lowest-grossing film, had a three-day opening of $39.2 million and a five-day opening of $55.6 million. In 2015, “Inside Out” opened to a massive $90.4 million while “Brave” in 2012 surprised a bit with $66.3 million, both of those opening on a regular three-day weekend. Taking a quick look at one Pixar sequel in 2017’s “Cars 3,” which was another film that opened on the lower end of the Pixar spectrum, that one even landed a $53.7 million opening. The tracking for “Onward” isn’t necessarily through the roof and the reaction is a bit lukewarm, but it does have strong enough reviews at an 87 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. That combined with the Pixar brand should, in theory, help it get high enough to at least hit par for the course.

After that slight deep dive into “Onward,” the other movie on the wide release schedule is The Way Back, which is not to be confused with 2013 film “The Way, Way Back.” Only one “way” here. This movie is a sports drama, perhaps leaning a bit more on the drama side of things, starring Ben Affleck and directed by Gavin O’Connor, who previously directed movies like “Miracle,” “Warrior” and “The Accountant.” So O’Connor is familiar with this specific genre and has a good resume there of quality films. Even though “The Accountant” has nothing to do with sports, that re-teams him with star Ben Affleck. In “The Way Back,” Affleck plays a former basketball player who turned down a scholarship to Kansas and is now struggling with alcoholism that is ruining his life. However, his high school alma matter offers him a job to coach their basketball team, which in turn gives him an opportunity to turn his life around. The movie is currently tracking to open in the $6-10 million range, which feels about right. In 2011, O’Connor’s “Warrior” opened to $5.2, while 2016’s “Eddie the Eagle” opened to around $6 million. On the higher end of the spectrum, a pair of Disney sports movies, “McFarland, USA” and “Million Dollar Arm,” opened to $11 million and $10.5 million respectively.

March 13th - 15th-

Barring a colossal failure on the side of Pixar or a huge surprise with one of these new films this weekend, "Onward" will claim a second week on top of the charts. But there's going to be four new wide releases this week all fighting for a spot somewhere in the top five and early indications seem to favor the Christian film I Still Believe. This movie comes from the exact same team as "I Can Only Imagine," who are looking to catch lightning in a bottle twice after "I Can Only Imagine" ended up earning $83.4 million domestically, which is one of the highest totals for a Christian film. The thing here is that Bart Millard and his band MercyMe are a bit more widely known than Jeremy Camp, the subject of "I Still Believe." Nevertheless, with Easter coming on April 12 and no other Christian film in the way, this is poised quite well for Christian audiences as it tells the story behind Jeremy Camp and how his first wife Melissa was diagnosed with cancer shortly before they married, which led him to write the song "I Still Believe." Christian films can be hard to predict at the box office and while "I Still Believe" probably won't hit as high as the $17.1 million opening of "I Can Only Imagine," a large sample of other Christian films suggest that $10-15 million is in play.

On a wildly different note, we swing from the uplifting Christian film to the movie that might be the most controversial film to be released as of late. That movie is The Hunt. Loosely based on a 1924 short story titled "The Most Dangerous Thing," this is a Hunger Games style of movie where a bunch of strangers wake up in a clearing only to learn that they are being hunted by a group of elites. The movie obviously does not shy way from the extreme politics of it all with the hunted representing the conservatives with the elite that are doing the hunting are representing the liberals. All of this being done in a very violent and comedic, tongue-in-cheek sort of way. Back in August, President Trump actually tweeted about the movie, accusing it of made solely to inflame and cause chaos, which might not necessarily be wrong. Although Mr. President may have not realized that the conservatives are actually the heroes of the movie while the liberals are the villains. Either way, the movie was pulled back in August following the El Paso and Dayton shootings, but Universal decided to eventually throw it back on the schedule while implementing a very self-aware advertising campaign that highlights the controversy and invites the moviegoer to come and decide for themselves.

The third movie of the weekend is the year's next superhero movie, Bloodshot. Although this is one of those superhero movies that many people may not realize exists or even realize is a superhero movie. And the unfortunate reality is that this is the case because "Bloodshot" is not Marvel or DC. It comes from Valiant Comics. Haven't heard of them? Well, they were founded in 1989. Sold in 1994 to Acclaim Entertainment, which went bankrupt in 2004. The company was restarted in 2005 by a pair of entrepreneurs in 2005. So yeah, it hasn't been all rainbows and butterflies for Valiant. Bloodshot is a character who got assassinated along with his wife and brought back by a team of scientists who use nanotechnology to turn him into a superhuman, biotech killing machine. When he slowly gets his memories back, he escapes and goes on a revenge mission to kill the man who killed his wife. Bloodshot is played by Vin Diesel, which is the biggest thing that this movie has going for it. Although as popular as Diesel is, he's not been known to carry a new franchise on his back based on his name alone. Because of that, one of his solo outings, that of "The Last Witch Hunter," might be a good comparison. That movie opened to $10.8 million back in 2015.

While it's true that comedies have a tendency to randomly break out and thus become a bit unpredictable, it nevertheless seems that My Spy is destined to come in last place out of the new wide releases this weekend. Although it's certainly not without its own bit of star-power as it's led by Vin Diesel's "Guardians of the Galaxy" co-star Dave Bautista, who is trying his hardest make a name for himself outside his beloved Drax role, but that hasn't exactly worked out lately, with the most recent failure being last year's "Stuber," which could only muster $8 million in its opening weekend, despite seeing Bautista team up with Kumail Nanjiani. "My Spy" has Bautista teaming up with 11-year-old Chloe Coleman, playing a 9-year-old girl in this movie, as he plays a CIA agent who is getting one last shot to prove his worth and thus becomes at the mercy of said 9-year-old girl who figures him out after he gets assigned to surveil her family. The movie seems like it's directed at a family audience, but went with the PG-13 rating, meaning it might awkwardly fall in the range of not pleasing families nor adults. The movie is directed by Peter Segal, whose last two movies, "Second Act" (2018) and "Grudge Match" (2013) opened to $6.5 million and $7 million respectively.

March 20th - 22nd-

After a weekend that had four new wide releases, the final two weekends in March both only have one movie each. This third weekend belongs solely to the release of A Quiet Place Part II. As I've mentioned a couple times this year when doing monthly previews and reviewing "The Invisible Man," 2020 has been a year where a whole bunch of horror movies have been dumped. But if "The Invisible Man" was the first major horror release, "A Quiet Place Part II" is the second one. And this could very well be the biggest three-day opening of the year so far, which currently belongs to "Bad Boys for Life" at $62.5 million. In 2018, "A Quiet Place" became quite the phenomenon as it opened to $50.2 million, which is practically unheard of for an original horror film based on no previous material. In fact, under those qualifications, it could be argued that "A Quiet Place" set that record, depending, of course, on what you qualify as a horror film. Said record was taken away by last year's "Us," which opened to $71.1 million. Given how popular "A Quiet Place" was, how recent it was released, and how it demands to be seen with a large crowd in a theater, "A Quiet Place Part II" is positioned to soar at the box office, potentially matching the range of "Us" or 2018's "Halloween," which opened to $76.2 million. The all-time horror record is "IT" in 2017 with $123.4 million.

March 27th - 29th-

The final wide release of the month is the movie in the most awkward position at the moment and that is Disney's Mulan. While Disney has been somewhat hit and miss with their live action remakes in terms of the box office success, the three times that they have dove into their classic 90s renaissance films has delivered massive results, with "Beauty and the Beast," "Aladdin" and "The Lion King" all delivering $1 billion worldwide. So naturally it makes sense financially to explore other 90s remakes, which is why we have "Mulan." However, Disney has decided to go down a slightly different route with this one, which has produced mixed results in terms of fan reaction to the trailers. Instead doing a direct remake of the 1998 animated film, Disney is ditching the musical element of this, as well as some beloved characters, like Eddie Murphy's Mushu. Why? Well, Disney has decided to be more true to the original Chinese lore here. Even though "Mulan" is arguably one of the more beloved Disney animated films, it was a situation where Disney took a Chinese story and "Disneyfied" it by completely changing everything and making it their own thing. While the Americans liked the results, the Chinese people arguably hated "Mulan," which leads us to the unfortunate elephant in the room.

Disney's goal with this "Mulan" remake was to first and foremost please the Chinese market by creating a "Mulan" movie that honored their culture and traditions. If they had to piss off a few bitter Americans in the process, that seemed worth it financially given how big the Chinese movie market is. But yeah, in case you've been living under a rock the last few months, the whole country of China right now is essentially quarantined due to the coronavirus. There is no Chinese movie market at the moment. And while some movies might be able to survive momentarily without China, "Mulan" is not one of them. The movie has a reported production budget of at least $200 million and an American fan base that is not too happy. Also, said fan base is realistically just not as big as "Beauty and the Beast," "Aladdin" and "The Lion King" in the frist place. Some circles are predicting "Mulan" to open in the $40-60 million range and finish with a domestic total of $120-150 million. That just won't cut it. Without China, Disney is heading straight for disaster at the moment. Disney is claiming that they are moving forward, but honestly they might be better off by pulling a James Bond and putting "Mulan" on the shelf for now until the coronavirus pandemic dies down.