Movie Preview: January 2022

Another year has come and gone. As such, it’s time to preview the year in film that is before us, which is something that I did not do last year. The state of the box office was still at a point where I had no idea what was going to come out, so there didn’t seem to be much of a point in my yearly preview. While things are still very fluid and in a state of recovery, I feel confident enough in the state of the industry to bring that post back.

Obviously this is not that post, but given that we’re in the new year, I wanted to let you know what the plan is. Every year that I do that post, it’s always a challenge to figure out how to balance the January preview as well. This year the January preview is coming first.

Granted, there’s not much to preview this January. Even before COVID, January was always a weird month. The box office would always be dominated by holiday holdovers and awards hopefuls expanding, while the new releases felt like movies that were just kinda dumped on the schedule given that January is not typically the optimal month to release something new. Add the Omicron concerns into all that and we have a pretty barren landscape. Now “Spider-Man: No Way Home” proved that people are still willing to go to the theaters if it’s for a movie they’re excited about. That movie has now made $1.4 billion worldwide, without a China release, in the midst of massively rising COVID cases. So that provides studios with plenty of confidence. Yet the movies that are in trouble with Omicron are the releases that people maybe weren’t so excited about. The typical January release. Sure, they’ll brave the storm for Spider-Man? But for a movie they weren’t so excited about? Not so much.

That’s a bit of a longer intro than I normally do. But given the circumstances and the lack of movies in this post, I felt it was a necessary. There’s not much to type in the body of this post, so perhaps I’m making up for it here? Anyways, let’s jump in. As always, release date info is courtesy of the-numbers.com and boxofficepro.com. The release dates listed are the domestic release dates, so United States and Canada, and are subject to change at any point.

January 7 – 9

Universal’s "The 355"

The winner of this weekend running away will be “Spider-Man: No Way Home” for a fourth straight weekend. As of Wednesday, the 5th, it has made $631.8 million domestically, good enough for eighth place on the list of highest grossing movies at the domestic box office. It just recently passed “Incredibles 2” ($608.6 million), “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” ($620.2 million), and “The Avengers” ($623.4 million). Next up are “Jurassic World” ($652.3 million) and “Titanic” ($659.4 million). It can pass both of those movies with $27.6 million from Thursday through Sunday. Box Office Pro is currently projecting $27.5 million on the 3-day alone, with a $663.3 million by the end of Sunday. And that’s with a projected 51 percent drop.

The only new release in the market that is hoping to break the top 5 is Universal’s new action thriller The 355. Actually, Universal is probably hoping for a lot more than just a total that sneaks into the top 5, but they might have to live with that. Box Office Pro is projecting this at just $3 million, enough to barely get it to third place, above “The King’s Man,” “American Underdog,” and “Matrix Resurrections,” while below the projected $12 million of “Sing 2.” On paper, “The 355” sounds like a winner. It has a huge cast of females, with Jessica Chastain, Lupita Nyong’o, Diane Kruger, Penelope Cruz, and Fan Bingbing all portraying female intelligent agents from different countries – United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Colombia, and China – teaming up together to stop a terrorist group from starting World War III. Chastain actually proposed this idea of a female-led spy thriller to Simon Kinberg while they were making “Dark Phoenix.” And thus this movie’s production began, with Kinberg here as the director and Chastain as one of the stars.

The ultimate challenge for “The 355” is making it stand out. The advertising has heavily pushed the Bourne connection with universal and they’re trying to make it the next big spy franchise. But there are a lot of these that have come out over the years. And unfortunately it may seem like one of the many generic Netflix action movies that have come out over the years, perhaps leading people to wait till whenever it hits a streaming service before they see it instead of rushing out to theaters. Hence the projected $3 million opening. The early critical score of 23 percent on Rotten Tomatoes with 77 reviews counted certainly won’t help things.

January 14 – 16

Paramount's "Scream"

While “The 355” is most definitely not going to dethrone Spider-Man at the top of the box office, the biggest challenger to Spider-Man this month comes here in the second weekend of January and that is the release of Scream. For what it’s worth, the one genre that has been able to consistently succeed in the month of January is the horror genre. Even low quality horror movies with terrible reviews have often been able to attract enough audiences to make back their budget. And “Scream” is the fifth movie in a very popular horror franchise that hasn’t had a theatrically-released film since 2011. This could definitely work in its favor. And although “Scream 4” had diminished returns compared to the first three, “Scream” is attempting to go the “Halloween” route by releasing a soft reboot/sequel to the original with the original cast and an identical name to the original. The strategy worked like a charm for “Halloween,” to the tune of one of the highest opening weekends ever for a horror movie. It remains to be seen if lightning can strike twice here with another horror franchise. “Scream 3” holds the biggest opening weekend with $34.7 million.

A $30 million opening weekend would definitely be a huge win for the franchise, especially since the bar is low for financial success with horror movies having much lower budgets than normal films. That’s why there’s still been a consistent stream of horror movies released throughout the entire pandemic. They don’t need to make a lot. Since there’s no other wide releases this weekend, I’ll quickly point out that “Scream 4” opened to $18.7 million. And while “Scream 3” holds the franchise record for opening weekend, when you adjust for ticket price inflation, “Scream 2” passes it up for a 2022 equivalent of $65.7 million (The unadjusted total for “Scream 2” is $32.9 million). Worst case scenario for “Scream” seems to be a $10-15 million opening, unless it completely bombs. A total in that range could theoretically still beat Spider-Man, but that would make for an awfully close race if that’s the case. And this is a holiday weekend, with Martin Luther King Jr. Day coming on Monday, so there could be good holds.

January 21 – 23

Universal’s "Redeeming Love"

There may or may not be two new wide releases coming to theaters in the third weekend of January. And by that I mean that the release schedule has two movies scheduled for wide release, but looking at the two movies, I’m not so sure how wide either of them will end up being. If I were to make a bet, I would say that the movie most likely to do well and/or be the widest new release is Redeeming Love. Mainly because it’s being distributed by Universal. And because the trailer on YouTube has 1.7 million views, compared to the other movie’s trailer having 201,000 views. You might be able to guess that “Redeeming Love” is a romance movie. And you’d be right. But it’s also a historical film. It’s a romance set in the 1850s during the Gold Rush, where the lead female has had a very bad history of abuse, so the idea of loving and trusting someone is difficult for her. It’s based on a best-selling novel by Francine Rivers. Those factors could all be in the movie’s favor as an early Valentine’s Day date option, even if the director or lead stars aren’t anyone too notable.

The other movie theoretically scheduled for release is The King’s Daughter, not to be confused with “The King’s Man” from last month. This is a real movie that’s coming out and it even has a trailer released, with a decent number of views, as just pointed out. The question here comes with the fact that the distributer is Gravitas Ventures and they’ve only released one movie that has made over $1 million in its entire run. And that’s a movie called “Queen Bees” from last year. It started in 500 theaters and finished with $1.6 million after an opening weekend of $375,000. Looking at those numbers, that feels about what “The King’s Daughter” will do. Although in its favor is a cast that’s led by Pierce Brosnan and William Hurt. The premise might throw you for a loop, though. It’s about King Louis XIV’s quest for immortality leading him to capture and steal the life force of a mermaid, whom his daughter discovered. Whether that makes you more or less likely to see it is for you to decide. It’s also notable that this is a movie that was filmed way back in 2014, so it’s been on the shelf for a very long time.

January 28 – 30

And that’s it. At the time of me typing this, there are no releases scheduled for the final weekend of January. So yeah, January is currently just “The 355” and “Scream,” with those two smaller films coming in the third weekend.

If you’re curious as to why this weekend is completely empty, Sony’s “Morbius” was previously slated for this dated. In light of Omicron, Sony pushed that movie to April, in hopes of Omicron having died down a bit. Also, there was supposed to be a “Sesame Street” movie on January 14 by Warner Bros., but they temporarily took that off the schedule, presumably waiting until cases die down before putting back on the schedule.

Also, the movie “Cyrano” might eventually come out at some point. That’s a new musical starring Peter Dinklage that has been getting a lot of critical praise. It had its Oscar-qualifying run in December and has also had screeners given out to critics and awards voters. But as far as its release to general audiences, it was initially scheduled for a limited release at the end of December and an expansion in January, but United Artists has changed their plans on that a few times. It’s currently scheduled for a limited release on this final weekend, but that could also be up in the air. This is the type of release where it might be most beneficial to wait a bit until Omicron dies down. Smaller releases have the biggest chance of being ignored. Or they might be waiting for Oscar nominations to come out, which is early February, with the hopes that Peter Dinklage gets a nomination, or it getting something in some category, then using that to gain interest. But despite the critical buzz being very high, the awards buzz seems very quiet. But whenever “Cyrano” comes out, I’ll give an update.