Movie Preview: February 2022

It’s been a busy week for this blog as I just posted my big year-end lists of my favorite movies of the year and my yearly preview of the upcoming year. But because I was a tad bit late on those than usual, we immediately turn our attention to the second month of the year. January went about as expected. Essentially there was just one new movie that made any noise and that was the reboot/sequel “Scream,” the fifth movie in the franchise that did rather well for itself with a $30 million debut, which was about double that of what I was expecting. Outside that, “The 355,” “Redeeming Love,” and “The King’s Daughter” all opened with less than $5 million, paving the way for “Spider-Man: No Way Home” to continue to dominate. Its current total of $740 million domestically is just around $20 million shy of the $760.5 million domestic total of “Avatar,” which will make it third on the domestic charts if it manages to pass that mark.

Onto February. “Spider-Man” will finally be dethroned for good (“Scream” reigned for a week, but then “Spider-Man” took the weekend title right back for the final two weeks). Winter storms are brewing. A Super Bowl match will take place that always impacts the box office. But we do have Valentine’s Day and President’s Day. And February has proven its worth in the recent past as a month that can have mega releases. See the likes of “Black Panther” or “Deadpool” for an example. But are there any on the calendar this year with potential or will the box office world stand still while the world waits for “The Batman” in March?

As always, release date information for this post is courtesy of the-numbers.com and boxofficepro.com. The movies listed are the movies currently scheduled to open in wide release domestically, so the United States and Canada, yet are always subject to change.

February 4 – 6

Paramount's "Jackass Forever"

Normally the first weekend of February is Super Bowl weekend. But not this year. The NFL added an extra week onto its schedule, which pushes Super Bowl weekend to the second weekend of February. We’ll get into the implications of that here in a second, but what it means for this weekend is a brief opening where both wide releases are targeting a male audience while the NFL is essentially on a bye week.

Hoping to take clear advantage of that is Jackass Forever, the fourth movie in the Jackass franchise, full of dangerous pranks, stunts, and a team of people putting themselves in harm’s way to get some laughs out of people. This team of people, led by Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, and others, has been doing this shtick for quite some time now. They started in 2000 with a TV show and have since done three movies and a spin-off and thus carry a built-in audience that has been quite reliable in the past. In fact, their first two movies in the early 2000s both opened in the 20 million range. The third movie in 2010 opened to $50.4 million and even the “Bad Grandpa” spin-off in 2013 surprised with a $32 million opening. So there seems to be a pretty solid floor for this movie. And given the low production costs of making these, the bar for success is quite low, in terms of making an official profit.

Perhaps the major obstacle for this franchise is that it’s been 12 years since that last movie in the main saga and nine years since the “Bad Grandpa” spin-off. And while video sharing platforms obviously existed when those movies were released, the popularity has skyrocketed since in the past decade. While the main core of the audience is likely to show up, it might be hard for the movie to attract much of a new young audience who has access to these types of videos for free on the likes of YouTube and TikTok. There have also been huge winter storms this weekend that could be impacting box office totals to at least some degree. “Jackass Forever” opened with an estimated $9.6 million on Friday, meaning its heading towards a weekend around $20-25 million, generally in line with expectations.

The other movie looking to target the male audience this weekend is the new Roland Emmerich disaster movie Moonfall. The premise of this movie surrounds a potentially apocalyptic disaster with the moon falling out of orbit and on a crash course towards Earth. A team of scientists has to figure out what’s going on and what they can do to save the world. In other words, a typical Roland Emmerich disaster movie. 20-25 years ago this is the type of movie that would be the movie event of the year. In 1996, “Independence Day” was the top movie of the year. Even in the years since then, Emmerich has scored huge six of his movies spanning three decades making over $100 million total at the domestic box office. The issue is that his reputation as filmmaker who makes quality films is a bit in question, especially as of late. Not helping his cause is the general lack of desire for these type of world-ending disaster movies.

Going into the weekend, the comparison for “Moonfall” was to the 2017 movie “Geostorm,” which opened with $13.7 million in its opening weekend. But “Moonfall” is looking to even fall short of that. Its estimated opening day total was $3.4 million, which means it could struggle to crack the $10 million mark. For comparison, “Geostorm” earned $5.9 million on its opening day on its way to that $13.7 million. This will be Emmerich’s worst opening weekend of his career for a movie that opened in at least 3,000 theaters. Lack of awareness, lack of a desire to see the movie, plus a wave of negative reviews is the cause of this.

February 11 – 13

20th Century Studios' "Death on the Nile"

The second weekend of February is an extremely unique weekend as Super Bowl meets Valentine’s Day. As mentioned above, the Super Bowl in the past has been the first Sunday of February, but due to the NFL adding another week the Super Bowl is now on the second Sunday of February. Why that has relevance to the movie world is that the Super Bowl is so popular that it completely axes the Sunday box office for that weekend, which means everything opening this weekend only has a two-day weekend. What makes it weird is that Valentine’s Day weekend often is quite the popular movie weekend. With Valentine’s Day on Monday, a date night movie trip for the weekend before will be in the cards for many. Does that mean this will be an extra big Friday and Saturday combined with an extra small Sunday?

The other question here becomes was Disney aware of this when they committed to this weekend for Death on the Nile? This is the follow-up to the 2017 movie “Murder on the Orient Express,” both of which are adaptations of the Agatha Christie series of mystery novels involving fictional detective Hercule Poirot. The character first appeared in “The Mysterious Affair at Styles” in 1920 and was continued appear in Christie novels and short stories until “Curtain” in 1975. This recent film series involving the character is portrayed by Kenneth Branagh, who has also directed both movies as well. This is good timing for Branagh as he’ll be coming off of many academy award nominations for “Belfast,” but is it good timing for this particular weekend?

“Death on the Nile” has been one of the COVID victims. It was initially scheduled for 2019 until Disney pushed it into 2020, a horrible decision in hindsight that they obviously couldn’t have predicted. Its final rescheduling came in March of 2021, when Disney pushed it to this date, which was probably before Disney knew that this would be Super Bowl weekend. So it’s possible Disney just wants to get this one out of the way. Its predecessor opened to $28.7 and wound up pretty leggy, finishing with $102.8 million domestically. The Super Bowl weekend record is $31.1 million, set way back in 2008 with the Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus concert movie. Only seven movies total have opened above $20 million. But again, we’re currently in uncharted territory with Valentine’s Weekend colliding with it.

Although speaking of Valentine’s Day, the movie that actually seems well positioned in the romance drama of the month in Marry Me. Jennifer Lopez plays one half of a superstar, celebrity couple. When things go awry between her and her partner, she decides to propose mid-concert to a nobody in the audience she has never met, played by Owen Wilson. Whether or not Owen Wilson can successfully pull off a “nobody” is probably irrelevant to the target audience here. A romance drama starring Jennifer Lopez and Owen Wilson could be perfect for Valentine’s Day. And what potentially puts it in better position is that the movies that have done well on Super Bowl weekend are the movies targeted at female audiences. Of the seven movies mentioned in the previous paragraph, most of them have been romance movies. So if things go south for “Death on the Nile,” and “Marry Me” does connect with its target audience, this could be potential upset territory here.

The third movie of the weekend that seems to be in the worst position is the latest Liam Neeson action flick Blacklight. Now outside the obvious here of trying to sell an action movie to a male target audience on the Super Bowl, the big challenge here is that these Liam Neeson action are becoming a dime a dozen. Even pre-COVID, “Cold Pursuit” and “The Commuter” opened to $11 million and $13.7 million respectively. But recently “The Marksman” and “Honest Thief” both opened just above $3 million. Now while that was during COVID and thus not the most apple-to-apples comparison, it nevertheless wouldn’t be surprising to see this movie fall in that range. Awareness seems low. Interest doesn’t seem to be there. And the weekend is a horrible one. Last month’s “The 355” opened to $4.6 million, which seems like a good range and thus means this might open around those latest two Liam Neeson, anyways. Even with a lot more theaters opened at this current time.

February 18 – 20

Sony Pictures' "Uncharted"

The third weekend of February is a lot more positively positioned. No Super Bowl to deal with and a four-day holiday weekend with Presidents’ Day on Monday. If any of the previous weekend’s movies get good reviews that could lead to excellent holdover business. On top of that, the new movie hoping to take full advantage of the holiday weekend is the long-awaited film adaptation of Uncharted. Theoretically speaking, this is a movie that’s in excellent position with the weekend at hand plus the presence of Tom Holland, fresh off the enormous success of the latest Spider-Man movie. That’s destined to sell a few extra tickets at the least. “Uncharted” is based off the video game series that began in 2007 and has spawned several sequel games since. Tom Holland will be playing the lead role of Nathan Drake in the action/adventure movie with Mark Wahlberg in line as his co-star. The obvious hurdle is the abysmal track record of video game movie adaptations. If this is yet another poorly reviewed video game adaptation, some might choose to stay away, so the reaction to this one will be key.

Sliding in right along with “Uncharted” will be the Channing Tatum drama Dog. Simple title for probably a simple movie. Channing Tatum plays a former Army Ranger who is paired against his will with this Army dog. Things seem like chaos at first, but because dog is man’s best friend, the two end up getting along and becoming close partners. Seems like a feel-good drama that has potential to become an underrated sleeper hit. I’m reminded of the 2015 movie “Max,” another movie about a military dog and his new human partner. That movie opened to $12.2 million and legged out to $42.7 million domestically. This isn’t going to win the weekend, but it could provide solid counterprogramming, especially if “Uncharted” ends up with poor reviews and this movie gets good reviews.

The final movie of the weekend is a movie that may or may not be actually coming out. It’s listed as being on the schedule, but it might be one of those movies that ends up in just a few hundred theaters. That movie is the horror film The Cursed. This was actually a 2021 Sundance film, but it didn’t get much attention and the reaction was fairly middling. The movie surrounds a supernatural threat in 1800s France and a pathologist that comes to investigate. The biggest concern to me in regards to box office potential is that it doesn’t seem to be getting much of a marketing push. The trailer just barely came out 10 days ago and I’ve not seen it anywhere. Compare that to “Uncharted” and “Dog,” both of which have been heavily pushed over the last several months. If this does come out, it seems to be the type of movie that will be fighting for a spot in the top 10 rather than one people pay attention to.

February 25 – 27

United Artists' "Cyrano"

Speaking of movies that may or may not come out, it’s the boy that cried wolf at this point with Cyrano, a movie I’ve included in both my December and January movie previews. It’s a musical starring Peter Dinklage that has received enormously strong praise… from the small handful of people that have managed to see it. Screeners have been sent out and it had a brief Oscar-qualifying run in December, but United Artists has really botched its rollout. It should be a movie getting all the awards attention with multiple nominations, or at least in the conversation. But it’s probably going to get blanked because no is talking about it due to few people even having the opportunity to see it. Even if it does finally commit to this newest release date, it has another major problem. “The Batman” comes out in the first weekend of March. Which is why every other studio is smartly choosing to completely avoid this weekend.