Movie Preview: July 2021

It’s been a long time since I’ve been on this blog doing my monthly movie preview segment. A 15-month hiatus from something that I used to do every single month ever since I started this blog in 2012. But that’s COVID for you. This is only my third post of the year when in pre-COVID times I’d have 70-100 posts by the end of the year. But I’m working on getting back into the groove of things. And with “F9” from the Fast and Furious franchise opening to $70 million in the final weekend of June, preceded by “A Quiet Place Part II” knocking out $50 million over Memorial Day weekend, there are no more excuses. Movies are back. We’re still in recovery mode, but things are finally looking stable enough for me to start back up again.

If you’re new to my world in the past 15 months, this is a segment where I inform you of what’s coming out each month in theaters, tell you a bit about the movie if necessary, and give an outlook on what its box office potential might be.

Information on release dates is courtesy of the-numbers.com and boxofficepro.com. Release dates are for the domestic box office, which is the United States and Canada.

July 2 – 4

There’s five weekends in July and by the time you’re reading this we’ll be well into this first weekend, which is Independence Day weekend in the United States. So maybe you’re out celebrating rather than reading things online, but we have two major releases this weekend, led by DreamWorks Animation’s The Boss Baby: Family Business. Reviews for this aren’t necessarily glowing, but this wasn’t a movie made for the critics. “The Boss Baby,” despite also have mixed to negative reviews, was a major hit with the young audience, a go-to movie for many kids over the last four years. In addition to this sequel, it’s also had a Netflix series that premiered in 2018 and has had four seasons already. So “Family Business” is sure to be a hit with the young kids as it sees the two main brothers, 40 years later and fully-grown adults, go back to being young, talking babies again.

The challenge to predicting how much this will make, outside that being hard to predict for anything right now, is that it’s debuting in theaters and on Peacock. How many parents will take their kids to the theater to see it and how many will sign up for Peacock to watch it for a much more discounted price than taking the whole family to theaters? The first movie opened to a shocking $50.2 million. In pre-COVID terms, I would say this would do in the range of $30-50 million if well-advertised, which I’m not sure it has been. Without looking at actual projections and Thursday night totals, I would’ve said $15-30 million. There’s not much comparisons, but “Tom and Jerry” did about $15 million in March with its hybrid release. “Cruella” in May did $21 million. So that’s currently the 2021 standard for family hybrid releases. Box Office Pro projected a $16.3 million opening weekend. It earned $1.3 million Thursday evening.

The other movie battling “The Boss Baby” is The Forever Purge. This is the fifth movie in the Purge franchise, whose simple premise is that once a year, for a period of 12 hours, all crime becomes legal, including murder. Each film has had its own spin on things, usually with not-so-subtle social commentary included. This movie’s take is that that the Purge will last… forever. In other words, a group of people continue to purge after the Purge has been completed. Or something along those lines. Financially the previous four have been extremely consistent, making between $64-79 million domestically. The first three all opened around $30 million, while the fourth one did just $17 million, but opened on a Wednesday and had had $31 million by the end of the 5-day weekend. So $20-30 million would seem like it would make sense, but these are different times. In May “Spiral,” the latest in the Saw franchise, opened to $8.7 million. Box Office Pro is projecting $9.6 million. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it go a tad bit higher, encroaching on $15 million, but we’ll see. It also opened to $1.3 million Thursday night, which is less than half of what the previous two movies in the franchise did.

There are always a handful of smaller releases that come out each month. And I usually only cover the major releases scheduled for wide release, mostly because it’s often hard to predict which smaller releases are actually coming out. But given that we’re in the middle of this weekend already, we do know that A24 is releasing the indie film Zola into 1,468 theaters. That’s a 2020 Sundance film that is based on a viral Twitter thread and tells the story of a stripper named Zola who takes a trip with her friend to Florida. We also have the documentary Summer of Soul (…Or, When Revolution Could Not Be Televised) being released in 752 theaters by Searchlight. It’s directed by Questlove and was a 2021 Sundance release about the 1969 Harlem Culture Festival. It was purchased by Searchlight for $12 million and will also got released on Hulu this weekend. Two weekends ago, the Edgar Wright directed documentary “The Sparks Brothers” opened in 534 theaters and made $273,530. “Summer of Soul” will be somewhere in that range, while “Zola” will look to grab a couple million.

July 9 – 11

Only one wide release in the second weekend of July and it’s a huge one. Marvel’s Black Widow will finally be hitting theaters. This was supposed to kick off Phase 4 of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Last May. But it was one of our first COVID casualties. It’s been repeatedly kicked down the schedule, which has made some fans upset and impatient. In hindsight that’s probably a good thing, though. Warner Bros. experimented with “Wonder Woman 1984” in December and that only made $46 million TOTAL. It was also a hybrid release, so who knows how much Warner Bros. wound up making with new HBO Max subscriptions, but they almost certainly left a ton of money on the table by not being patient. And now “Black Widow” looks to sprint past that $46 million total in just a couple of days.

It does seem a bit crazy that we’re 13 years into the MCU and just finally getting the “Black Widow” movie that fans have been begging for ever since Natasha first showed up in “Iron Man 2” back in 2010. She went through four Avengers movies and a couple of Captain America movies, and, spoilers for “Avengers: Endgame,” got killed off before finally getting her own solo movie. So yeah, this will go into the prequel realm of sorts. We’re going back to the “Captain America: Civil War” era of the timeline. And although everyone knows her fate by now, one of the major attractions is that of Florence Pugh, who plays Natasha’s sister Yelena in this movie. While Scarlett Johansson gets her swan song film, Florence Pugh is the shining new star and will most certainly be taking the mantle from Scar-Jo in future movies

In regards to the box office, Marvel solo movies typically open in the $80-100 million range. Sequels can go a bit higher. $100-125 million or so. I would probably classify this in this sequel range given that fans have known Black Widow for over a decade. But with the world not quite being ready to return to full force, that first range seems about right. “Captain Marvel” actually opened to $153 million, but that was a month before “Avengers: Endgame” and many fans felt obligated to catch that before seeing “Endgame.” This is also technically another hybrid release. Disney will be putting this on Disney+ for the $30 premium tag. That might eat into its total a bit. But no one was probably happier than Disney seeing “F9” break out with $70 million because that means a high total like that is actually possible. “Black Widow” will probably go a few notches higher than that, perhaps reaching the $85 million opening of “Doctor Strange.”

 

July 16 – 18

If “Black Widow” follows the trajectory of “Doctor Strange,” it’ll be looking at a repeat No. 1 with around $40-45 million. “Doctor Strange” did $42 million in its second weekend. “Black Widow” should at least get $35 million, which I imagine will be plenty to top this weekend’s crop of new arrivals, which are led by LeBron James and Bugs Bunny in Space Jam: A New Legacy. After the Lakers experienced an early first round exit in this year’s playoffs, when asked if he was going to play in the Olympics, LeBron instead said that he was going to go play with Tune Squad instead, meaning he’s in full promotion mode right now. “Space Jam” was released in 1996 and starred Michael Jordan helping the Looney Tunes beat the Monstars, who stole the powers of a few of his NBA friends. They’ve been trying to do a sequel for a long time, but it never panned out until now. In this sequel, the Goon Squad kidnaps LeBron’s son and forces him to play a game of basketball against them to get his son back. Lose and he never sees his son and the Looney Tunes also get deleted.

Not that it’s a good comparison, but the original “Space Jam” opened to $27 million in 1996 and wound up as the 15^th highest grossing movie that year with $85.4 million. Perhaps coincidentally, that’s probably the range “A New Legacy” is looking at, too. Although $27 million with 1996 ticket prices would be about $56 million with today’s ticket prices. So I don’t know if that’s a win. Maybe in pre-COVID times, “A New Legacy” could’ve got close to $50 million. But all things considered, that seems like a very long shot. It’s also an HBO Max hybrid release, so many might choose to stay home and watch it, especially if reviews end up matching the enthusiasm towards the trailer, which has certainly been mixed.

“Space Jam” will be competing with Escape Room: Tournament of Champions for the runner-up spot this weekend. And depending on how things, this could theoretically be a close battle. A horror movie based on the Escape Room experience, which has been quite popular in recent years, the first movie was a surprise hit back in January 2019, opening to $18.2 million and earning $57 million total at the domestic box office, with $155 million worldwide. Not bad for a horror film budgeted at $9 million. Now despite the surprise performance, the Rotten Tomatoes score for the film was 51 percent, both for critics and the audience meter. So it’s not like it was a wildly beloved movie. Combine that with the horror sequel issue and the whole pandemic thing and an $18 million opening is probably a stretch. But low budget horror movies don’t need to make much at all to be a success, so it’s probably in good position.

A movie that may or may not be coming to a theater near you is Gunpowder Milkshake. It’s a female-led action film starring Karen Gillan, Michelle Yeoh, Angela Bassett and Paul Giamatti. Karen Gillan plays a hitwoman who teams up with a bunch of other hitwoman and assassins to accomplish a certain mission. I say this may or may not be coming to a theater near you because Netflix has the distribution rights in the U.S. and Canada, while STX has the international distribution rights. The trailer for Netflix does say it’s coming to select theaters and Netflix on July 14, which is a Wednesday. How many theaters will that be? Who knows. Netflix actually struck a deal with Cinemark back in May to release some of their films theatrically. But when Netflix does release movies in theaters, they don’t release box office numbers. So we’ll never know what the theater count will be or how well it does. But if it doesn’t come to a theater near you, it will be coming to a Netflix near you.

 

July 23 – 25

The fourth weekend of July sees the blockbuster prequel the whole world has been begging for. And if you think that sounds a bit sarcastic, that’s because it is. It’s Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins. Although I should be fair because there are G.I. Joe fans that wouldn’t be too happy with me if I were to claim that no one is excited for this movie. There might be a few. But the overall general sense of enthusiasm doesn’t seem extremely high. Both G.I. Joe movies, “Rise of Cobra” in 2009 and “Retaliation” in 2013 were modest successes, but compared its fellow toy to movie franchise in Transformers, it didn’t quite take off in the way Paramount was hoping. But Paramount is hoping to spark some life into and they’re doing so using arguably the most popular character in Snake Eyes. Playing Snake Eyes is Henry Golding from “Crazy Rich Asians” fame. So things could be worse. “Rise of Cobra” opened to $54 million, Retaliation” $40 million. I’m not sure it hits either of those. For some reason “Mortal Kombat” and its $23.3 million opening seems like a better comparison here, but it could go higher.

Opening alongside “Snake Eyes,” and with an outside chance to pull the upset is M. Night Shyamalan’s new mystery thriller Old. The trailer for this shows a family going to a beach and suddenly various people around start aging mysteriously, becoming many years older in just a few minutes according to the vantage point of others on the beach. It also appears that they are unable to leave the beach. So very much in Shyamalan’s wheelhouse. The success of the movie will ultimately depend on which Shyamalan showed up to direct. Is it the Shyamalan who directed the likes of “The Sixth Sense,” “Unbreakable” and “Split”? Or the Shyamalan who directed “The Happening,” “After Earth” and “The Last Airbender”? If it’s the former and word of mouth is positive, this could turn into a sleeper hit, although it will probably rely on having longer legs at the box office rather than a high opening. It’s worth noting, though, that most of Shyamalan’s movies opened in the $25-40 million range. $18 million is his low. But these aren’t exactly normal times, so perhaps expectations should be tempered. 

The smaller release of this weekend is The Comeback Trail. Although despite small expectations, the cast here is rather large. The movie stars Robert De Niro, Tommy Lee Jones, Morgan Freeman and Zach Braff. It’s directed by George Gallo, one of the writers of the Bad Boys movies. The movie is a crime comedy about two film producers who decide to make a movie where they kill their lead star in a dangerous stunt so they can get insurance money from his death to pay off a mob debt. The movie is being distributed by Cloudburst Entertainment, a smaller company who have only released one film so far, that of “Infidel” in September 2020 when theaters were starting to reopen again. That opened to $1.3 million, which wasn’t awful for pandemic standards. I’m not sure this one is expected to earn much more than that, but that’ll depend on how many theaters it opens in and what the reviews are like.

 

July 30 – Aug 1

And the final weekend will see Disney on top of the box office with Jungle Cruise. This was yet another COVID casualty from last year. Although instead of slowly pushing it down the road a few months at a time, when theaters closed up Disney simply threw it forward a year from July 2020 to July 2021. The marketing was in full force when the pandemic hit, so Disney has to hope that people are still excited enough to turn out. The movie is based on the popular Disneyland ride where a tour guide telling a continuous stream of Dad jokes takes you down the river on a boat. Like with “Pirates of the Caribbean,” much plot has to be added to turn it into a successful movie. Disney would certainly hope they can catch lightning in a bottle again like they did with “Pirates.” And they do have Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt starring in the film, two very big box office draws. Like with “Raya,” “Cruella” and “Black Widow,” Disney has chosen to do the hybrid release in theaters and Disney+ premier access. The current comparison with that is “Cruella,” which opened to $21 million with that strategy.

Not in contention to pull an upset, but hoping to appeal to indie crowds for a potentially leggy box office run will be A24’s The Green Knight. A24 is not necessarily known for their massive box office hits, but they are known for their unconventional films, which has made them one of the more popular indie distributers. And “The Green Knight” is another one that has people’s attention. It’s an Arthurian legend based on the poem “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” dating back to the 14 Century. Sir Gawain, King Arthur’s nephew accepts a challenge from the Green Knight. The Green Knight dares anyone to strike him with an axe and will give a return blow a year later to whoever does. Gawain chops off the Green Knight’s head, so the Green Knight picks up his head and says he’ll be back in a year to chop off Gawain’s head. This movie adaptation is directed by David Lowery, director of 2016’s “Pete’s Dragon” and “A Ghost Story.” Dev Patel stars as Sir Gawain, with Alicia Vickander and Joel Edgerton co-starring.

The final movie from this month that we’ll be talking about is another smaller indie film, Stillwater. In regards to box office, both “Stillwater” and “The Green Knight” will be looking to play the long game, so the opening weekend totals are less important than the overall reaction and the lengthy box office run. “Stillwater” is distributed by Focus Features and is directed by Tom McCarthy, whose last theatrically released film was “Spotlight,” which won best picture. Because of that, “Stillwater” is thought to be a potential awards contender, although it’s being released a tad bit early if it wants to really contend for that. But it stars Matt Damon as a father who travels from Oklahoma to France to help his estranged daughter, played by Abigail Breslin, who has been charged with the murder of her friend and partner. The movie will be premiering a few weeks prior at the Cannes Film Festival (July 6-17) before its theatrical release, so the reaction there will clue us in on what its award potential actually is.