Movie Preview: April 2022

We have arrived in April 2022, which means the year is a quarter of the way through. Always a weird thing to think about with how fast time goes. But things are looking very positive at the box office and we have an abnormally busy April to talk about. Most years, April is that awkward month between March and May, two very popular months of the year for movies. And while it sounds like a broken record to say that things aren’t normal at the moment, we’ve had plenty of strong box office performances of late that suggest people are feeling comfortable coming back to theaters. What makes this current April unique is that studios mostly avoided March, allowing “The Batman” to completely dominate. In fact, they mostly avoided January and February, too, mostly due to Omicron. The consequences of that, as mentioned, is this abnormally busy April that has more attempted blockbusters than is common for an April, which should make this an exciting month. At least for some.

As always, release date information for this post is courtesy of the-numbers.com and boxofficepro.com. The movies that are listed are the ones currently scheduled for a wide theatrical release in the United States and Canada. Said release dates are always subject to change.

April 1 – 3

Sony’s "Morbius"

Starting the month off is yet another comic book movie, that of Sony’s Morbius. While the Marvel Brand, and superhero movies as a whole, are bigger in today’s era of movies than they ever have been, “Morbius” isn’t one that has received a whole lot of positive fanfare. Dr. Michael Morbius is a comic book character dating back to 1971 and is typically used as a villain to Spider-Man, although he has wandered into anti-hero realms at times. His character biography includes him having a rare blood condition that evolves into him becoming a full-out superhuman vampire upon them attempting to cure said blood condition. Thus he’s another “science experiment gone wrong” style of Spider-Man villain. This adaptation of the character is played by Jared Leto and follows the trend of Sony making movies of Spider-Man villains or anti-heroes without the inclusion of Spider-Man. What Sony’s end game with all of this is anybody’s guess, but the massive success of “Venom” and its sequel has given them confidence in going forward with this route. Although Venom is a much more popular character than Morbius, so this is a potential oversight in reading what audiences want.

The initial trailer for “Morbius” was released in January 2020 as it was scheduled for a July 2020 release date. It thus became one of the many movies that became victim of COVID and has thus bounced around the release schedule until Sony finally settled on this date, over two years after that initial trailer was released. And while such ping-ponging is understandable, “Morbius” is not one that has been well-served by such delays as reactions to any trailer have been mixed to negative. The negative stench has seemingly gotten worse the more the movie has been pushed back. And Jared Leto’s reputation has only worsened after his Razzie-winning performance in “House of Gucci” added to an already controversial resume of recent performances following his widely mocked turn as Joker in 2016’s “Suicide Sqaud.” Fair or not, the man has become a bit of a punchline, which doesn’t help this movie’s prospects. No surprise the reviews have come in at an abysmal 20 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Yet despite that, Sony is still expecting a $40 million debut, which is half as much as “Venom” and not anywhere close to the MCU Marvel films, but for its respectable $75 million budget is not bad at all. A potential minor win for a movie that’s had a lot of toxic buzz for two years.

April 8 – 10

Paramount's "Sonic the Hedgehog 2"

Perhaps the most highly anticipated movie of the month hits theaters in this second weekend of April. And in an odd turn of events over the last three years, that movie is Sonic the Hedgehog 2. Because, yeah, it was around three years ago this time when that initial trailer got released and widely mocked. You know the story. The movie was postponed for them to redesign Sonic and that redesign shocked people in a good way. The movie went on to be a pretty solid hit, opening with $58 million over the 3-day and $70 million over the 4-day Presidents Day weekend in February 2020, a month before the pandemic hit. And yes, it has been two years since COVID initially hit, which through all the craziness and blurred timelines for all of us, Paramount managed to make a sequel to “Sonic,” with the return of Jim Carrey as the villain and the addition of Tails and Knuckles to the adventures. Anticipation and excitement are pretty high and initially reviews are fairly promising. $40-60 million is the expected range for its opening. I personally wouldn’t be surprised to see it hit the top end of that range, matching or coming close to its predecessor. And it should have a fairly long runway with its release with not a whole ton of family competition in April and May.

The other release of this weekend is the new Michael Bay action/thriller Ambulance. This is Michael Bay’s first movie he’s directed since “6 Underground” in 2019 and first theatrical release since “Transformers: The Last Night” in 2017, as “6 Underground” was a Netflix release. It stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II as two adoptive siblings who attempt a bank robbery. Said bank robbery goes wrong and leads the brothers to hijacking an ambulance and leading the police on a high speed chase. This was actually released a few weeks ago in a handful of international markets and has performed decently, earning $13 million so far from about 30 markets. Reaction has been decently positive. Nothing through the roof, but it appears to be a fairly entertaining action film from people wanting a simple escape. In terms of its opening weekend, the last two theatrically released non-Transformers movies that Michael Bay directed were “13 Hours” in 2016 and “Pain & Gain” in 2013. Those two movies opened to $16 million and $20 million, respectively. That’s about the range that’s expected here, if not a tad bit lower. $12-18 million is the range that Box Office Pro has projected.

April 15 – 17

Warner Bros.' "Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore"

The third weekend of April sees the return of the Wizarding World, with the third movie in the “Fantastic Beasts” spin-off franchise, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore. Normally one would think that there would be massive buzz and excitement from Potterheads that would lead this to be one of the most anticipated movies of the year. However, it’s worth noting that excitement levels seem to be an all-time low for any “Harry Potter” or “Fantastic Beasts” related property. The first “Fantastic Beasts” was generally well received, albeit with a tad bit of mixed feelings. However, “The Crimes of Grindelwald” was pretty universally rejected among Potter fans, casual fans, and critics alike. On top of that, there has been plenty of controversy surrounding the franchise outside the realm of the films themselves, with J.K. Rowling herself making many enemies with her online comments as well as Warner Bros. making the decision to fire Johnny Depp as Grindelwald, replacing him with Mads Mikkelsen. While Mikkelsen is a well-liked actor, many may choose to skip the movie due to a bad taste in their mouth after the firing of Depp. And that decision has been perhaps made easier by the fact that many have lost interest in the series, anyways.

Fair or not, “The Secrets of Dumbledore” has a bit of an uphill battle to climb to win fans back. But all that considered, this is still a movie in the “Harry Potter” universe and that alone will lead this to at least not be a complete disaster. Every movie in the main saga opened with at least $75 million, regardless of response. The two “Fantastic Beasts” movies opened to $74 million and $64 million, respectively. “The Crimes of Grindelwald” became the first movie in the universe to not hit $200 million domestically, but its $159.6 million isn’t terrible, especially for spin-off movie standards. Box Office Pro is expecting around $50 million for its opening and $100-125 million total domestically. I’m sure Warner Bros. would like a whole lot more out of one of their main franchises, but things could be worse. If they end up making a quality film that people enjoy, that will go a long way in winning audiences back.

Tagging along with “The Secrets of Dumbledore” this weekend is a little film called Father Stu. This is a Mel Gibson and Mark Wahlberg led drama from Sony about a boxer turned priest, based on the true life story of Stuart Long, with Wahlberg being the one playing the lead role here. I’m not 100 percent sure how much of a religious angle this has as compared to simply an inspirational story, but in theory it is positioned well as a movie about a man changing his life to become a priest being released on Easter weekend. Although the movie has an R-rating tagged to it, suggesting the target audience isn’t necessarily the grassroots Christian audience, but rather simply to adults in general who want to watch an inspiring drama. The Easter release of it all might be more of a coincidence. This will look to find a place somewhere in the top 10, with a projected $4-8 million for its opening.

April 22 – 24

Universal’s "The Bad Guys"

Not the final weekend of the month, but it is the final weekend of the month with wide releases coming out. Leading the way will be DreamWorks with their latest animated film The Bad Guys. This will be leading the way out of the new films, anyways as it’s more of a low key release for DreamWorks. They have been pushing it, but awareness doesn’t seem to be incredibly high at the moment. This stars a team of bad guys, or bad animals, rather – a wolf, a snake, a tarantula, a shark, and a piranha – who are trying to change their imagine and become good guys, cleverly using Billie Eilish’s song “Bad Guy” in their advertising. DreamWorks is still one of the major animation studios around, but it has been a while since they’ve had a broadly appealing franchise hit like a “Shrek,” a “Kung Fu Panda” or a “How to Train Your Dragon” to attract audiences with. Comparing their last two “normal” releases (ignoring the pandemic releases), “The Boss Baby: Family Business” opened to $16 million last year and “Abominable” opened to $20 million in 2019. That’s a far cry from when they consistently opened movies to $30-50 million, but it seems like a fair range for this one. Like with “Sonic,” though, there’s really no other major family release until “Lightyear” in June, so the potential runway here could be long if this gets good reviews and word of mouth spreads.

The second movie of this weekend might be more of a niche thing and said target is already loving it and that’s The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. I say “already” because this premiered at the South by Southwest Film Festival a few weeks back in March and is currently standing at 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes through its first 24 reviews and has an IMDb score of 8.8. Whether or not those numbers stand when it hits a wide audience is to be determined, but this movie is a Nicolas Cage meta action/comedy. Love Nicolas Cage movies? Love how he’s crazy, goofy, and unrestrained in a very self-aware sort of way? Well, “Massive Talent” is a movie where Nicolas Cage stars as Nicolas Cage and leans into every Nicolas Cage trope or meme in what seems to be one of the most self-aware movies as of late. Those who don’t get the joke have the potential to be lost, hence this being more of a niche movie. But I could see a world wherein this either tops “The Bad Guys” as the highest grossing new release this weekend or holds well throughout the weeks and months ahead as word gets out to Nicolas Cage fans, assuming word of mouth as high as it has been from South by Southwest.

The final movie of the weekend and the month sees director Robert Eggers returning with The Northman. Eggers is the director of “The Witch” and “The Lighthouse,” both of which he took the audience directly into the time periods of the subject matter in attempted super realistic portrayals, including actual dialogue styles from the time taken from journals and whatnot. “The Witch” portrayed the time of the Salem Witch Trials while “The Lighthouse” involved late 1800s sailors at a lighthouse. And now Eggers is taking his audience into the time of the Vikings with an action/adventure epic about a young Viking prince on a quest to avenge his father’s murder. It’s an Eggers reunion of sorts as he brings in Anya Taylor-Joy from “The Witch” and “Willem Dafoe” from “The Lighthouse,” while adding the likes of Alexander Skarsgard, Nicole Kidman, and Ethan Hawke to the mix. Now there is a chance that Focus Features decides to play the long game with this in terms of theater counts and the box office plan. It’s scheduled for a wide release, but said wide release could be a smaller one focused on building buzz and establishing long legs rather than going for the big opening weekend. “The Lighthouse,” Egger’s most recent film, maxed out at 978 theaters after a smaller rollout. This could be bigger than that, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Focus is not too terribly concerned about having a large opening weekend as their marketing hasn’t been too aggressive yet.

April 29 – May 1 

Currently as I’m typing this, there’s no new wide releases scheduled for this final weekend of April. And that would kinda make sense as “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” is set to kick off the summer movie season in the first weekend of May, in true Marvel tradition. So studios tend to mostly avoid the final weekend of April before that happens. And that’s a smart move. You only have a week before you’re completely swallowed up.

That said, the sites I look at give me conflicting results on what’s going on with the latest Liam Neeson action movie “Memory,” as directed by Martin Campbell. So that may or may not be coming out. If it does, “Blacklight” in February opened to $3.5 million, while “The Marksman” opened to $3.1 in January 2021. So that’s the easy comparison for “Memory” if it does come out.

It’s also worth noting that A24 will be expanding the release “Everything Everywhere All At Once” throughout the month. It had a fantastic limited release opening on the final weekend of March, making $501,305 from just 10 theaters and so far has had phenomenal reviews. It’s set for a wide expansion on April 8, but also might be continually expanding as the month moves on and word of mouth continues to build.

Finally, we could always be in for some potential surprises. When I wrote my March preview, the calendar was mostly empty and I suggested some potential titles that could take advantage and have a surprise wide release. And that happened with “Jujutsu Kaisen 0: The Movie” on March 18 and “RRR: Rise, Roar, Revolt” on March 25, both of which had solid debuts ($18 million and $9 million respectively) and they weren’t even on my radar. “X” and “The Outfit” also wound up with semi-wide releases and did decently well and those were among the movies I did suggest could go wide. So just a reminder that this is not necessarily an all-encompassing post. I do my best to hit all of the major wide releases, but surprises sometimes happen, especially on weekends like this where nothing is scheduled.