Movie Preview: January 2023

Is it 2023 already?

The ending of a year, for me, means that it’s time to start working on my series of year-in-review posts. For this blog that means my top 10 favorite movies of the previous year as well as my preview of what’s coming up this current year. And that’s a lot of fun to dive into, even if only for my own personal reflection. But before we do all that, I like to first get my January movie preview complete. Then after that we’ll dive into the 2023 preview as a whole before finishing by looking back on my favorite movies of 2022.

So… January.

Historically speaking, this has always been an interesting month for new releases. Typically if a studio has a big blockbuster they want to get audiences to, a holiday release the month before is the way to go. And if a studio wants to push a movie for potential awards, releasing the movie towards the end of the year keeps it fresh on the minds of voters. Releasing it during the first month of the year makes it nearly impossible to get any consideration, so the implications of that is such that January becomes a bit of a wasteland for new releases while holiday holdovers dominate the box office and previous year’s awards contenders expand to wide release around the time of Oscar nominations for a final push.

In the latter category, this season was a bit of a weak one for the late year awards movies, at least in terms of reception from general audiences. Movies like “The Banshees of Inisherin,” “The Fabelmans,” “TAR” and “Women Talking,” while getting high praise from critics and attention from the awards voters, have been mostly ignored by general audiences with poor box office totals, comparatively. And in regards to holiday holdovers, there’s one. And pretty much only one. That’s “Avatar: The Way of Water.” The follow-up of my deep dive last month on this film is that it very much succeeded. In less than a month of release as of this post, it’s already become the highest grossing film worldwide of 2022 with $1.5 billion. And its domestic total of just under $500 million trails only “Top Gun: Maverick” on the year. And that’s interesting considering it opened on the lower end of pre-release expectations and fell fairly sharply in its second weekend, causing some to prematurely label it as a disappointment. But the holiday box office is a marathon, not a sprint.

Will it end up matching the totals of the first “Avatar,” that of $2.7 billion worldwide and $760 million domestically (in its initial run)? Maybe not quite, but the fact that those numbers aren’t completely out of the realm of possibilities or that it will come awfully close if it falls a bit short tells enough of a story. Any reports of it being a disappointment in any way, at least financially, are outrageously laughable. But this month will tell the story of exactly how high it can finish as it’s likely to keep the top spot at the box office the whole month, due mostly to the lack of major options.

But yes, there still are new releases on the schedule and since this post is what that’s all about, let’s actually step in and explore what will be hitting theaters this month. As always, release date information for this post is courtesy of boxofficepro.com and the-numbers.com. The movies listed are the ones currently scheduled for wide release in the United States and Canada are always subject to change.

January 6 – 8

Universal's "M3GAN"

Due to factors mentioned in this post’s introduction, there is the stigma that “nothing good comes out in January.” Turns out that might be proven false this time around right in the first weekend as M3GAN rings in the new year as a new creepy doll horror film for audiences to check out. This concept is certainly far from original, with “Anabelle” and “Child’s Play” being obvious examples. M3GAN is an artificially intelligent robotic doll that is programmed to be a young girl’s best friend, and to protect her at all costs. And well, like with all movies regarding creepy dolls or anything artificially intelligent, things are going to go wrong as M3GAN is going to become a little overly protective to an extreme fault.

January has actually been a solid month for horror films. This initial weekend of the year has provided plenty of breakout horror films, which thus makes sense for Universal to stake claim on the weekend with “M3GAN.” What might separate “M3GAN” from a lot of these other outings are reviews that are surprisingly very high as the movie is certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, with a current score of 93 percent. Now if one looks closely, not many are calling this a horror masterpiece, but the fact that critics are nearly unanimous in calling this a fun, self-aware horror comedy should speak volumes to what this movie’s potential could be. It’s had a very aggressive marketing push in the weeks leading up to its release and even has a user-friendly PG-13 rating that should attract even more of a younger audience. Cap that off with great reviews and it looks to have hit the perfect formula for success.

Current tracking for its opening weekend has the movie pegged right in the range of last year’s “Smile” ($22.6 million) and “The Black Phone” ($23.6 million). Positive word of mouth and lack of competition could cause the movie to at least flirt with a $100 million domestically when all is said and done. “The Black Phone” hit $90 million and “Smile” hit $105 million. And considering the $12 million budget of “M3GAN,” that means we should be seeing plenty more of this doll in years to come.

UPDATE: I typed this before the weekend, yet was delayed in getting it out. “M3GAN” opened to $30 million, higher than expectations and with better day-to-day holds compared to the other movies mentioned. Rather than retype this paragraph, maybe it’ll be interesting to some to see what was expected vs. what actually happened. It opened in second place behind “Avatar: The Way of Water,” which had a $45 million fourth weekend – the second best fourth weekend ever behind only the original “Avatar” with $50.3 million.

January 13 – 16

Sony Pictures' "A Man Called Otto"

The second weekend of January has four new wide releases. Whether any of them garner any attention over the four-day holiday weekend, with Martin Luther King Jr. Day on Monday the 16th, is a different story. But they will at least be options. Leading the way will be Tom Hanks in A Man Called Otto. This is a movie I actually brought up last month. I had it pegged as a Christmas Day release. Turns out it opened on December 30 instead, earning $56,257 from four theaters on that weekend, for a solid per-theater average of $14,064. And it is actually expanding to about 650 theaters in the first weekend of January before officially getting a wide release in this second weekend. And while my tone last month was a bit cynical at this remake of the 2015 Swedish film, “A Man Called Ove,” the surprise so far is that the movie has been decently well received. It’s hanging in there with a critics score around 70 percent and a much higher audience score of 96 percent. While it’s not likely to score too many Oscar nominations, outside Tom Hanks possibly sneaking into best actor, this has the potential to be a decent mid-range hit, especially with the popularity of Hanks and a role that he looks perfect for.

After two positively received options with “M3GAN” and “A Man Called Otto,” traditional January affair is not lost this month with Gerard Butler’s Plane crash-landing this weekend. Say what you will about Gerard Butler, but the man is at least extremely consistent with the types of movies he puts out. And I’m sure that means he has a lot of fun playing these types of action/disaster movies. “Plane” sees him as a pilot who is forced to land his commercial aircraft after he hits a terrible storm and that finds him in the middle of a war zone. So yeah, if one has seen any Gerard Butler films, this seems to be on par with most everything else. And that can be a positive if people know what they’re getting into and are perfectly satisfied with a Gerard Butler action film that requires little brainpower. The movie is expected to open in the single digit million range, although Butler has surprised before in January, with “Den of Thieves” opening to $15.2 million in January 2018. His “…Has Fallen” series has consistently opened around $20-30 million, while “Geostorm” hit $13.7 million, meaning there’s potential for “Plane” to not necessarily be completely dead on arrival.

A movie with perhaps a bit more potential than “Plane” is the comedy House Party. This is a movie about two friends who are out of money and down on their luck that decide to host a big party at the house they were last hired to clean, that of basketball player LeBron James. While the main two leads are lesser known actors and the movie is directed by Calmatic, who is mostly known for directing music videos, the draw of the film comes with the cameos in this party, with LeBron being the big one, as he also produces the film. And the fact that this is a remake of a 1990 film of the same name, which has become a cult classic. Whether or not that’s a positive note in regards to people’s reaction to the movie could be up for debate, but that nevertheless gives attention to the movie. And if it has some attention, that could give it the potential to deliver decent numbers in a quiet month.

While horror movies can do well in January, even with varying degrees of quality, they also have the potential to show up and simply end up on no one’s radar, which seems to be the initial prognosis for The Devil Conspiracy. Based on the trailer, the plot of this movie seems to be more ambitious than your traditional horror film. A Satanic cult steals the shroud of Christ, giving them access to Christ’s DNA, helping them give the ultimate offering to the devil. This appears to lead to an eventual battle of Lucifer and the archangel Michael, each taking hosts from Earth to allow them to return, which seems akin to the TV show “Supernatural.” But if you’re going to release a movie and have it make money, you have to advertise it. I had to search to find even a bit of information on this after seeing it on the schedule. It doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page and has almost nothing on IMDb. It’s also from a brand new production company called Third Day Productions. So whether or not this is actually getting a wide release and how much it will make is something I’m currently questioning.

January 20 – 22

Sony Pictures' "Missing"

Barring a surprise breakout from one of the films from the previous weekend, a quiet second weekend should be followed by an even quieter third weekend. Leading the light load of new releases will be the new thriller Missing, which is advertised as being from the team behind the 2018 movie “Searching,” which was a mystery/thriller that was essentially a found footage movie, but with social media, computer cameras, news stories, and the like. So a fairly unique concept. Reports are that it took 13 days to film, but a year and a half to edit. Said editing team of Nicholas D. Johnson and Will Merrick are back to… direct “Missing,” also getting credit for writing the screenplay, with a story by the original writer and director team. So I suppose they’re playing musical chairs with their roles, but it’s a similar concept as “Searching.” Wikipedia has it labeled as a “computer screen mystery thriller,” with the story following a teen girl using various technologies to try to find her mother, who’s gone missing. For the sake of box office comparison, “Searching” opened to $6.1 million in its first weekend of wide release and rode good reviews to a $26 million domestic total.

The next entry on this list is a bit of a question. Box Office Pro says in their long range forecast that there’s an Untitled Crunchyroll Film scheduled for this weekend, as well as another on February 3. The-Numbers.com doesn’t list either of those, but has an Untitled Crunchyroll on February 14. Crunchyroll doesn’t necessarily bring a lot of fanfare leading up to their releases, but often are able to get the niche audience in with strong numbers. Last year they released “One Piece Film: Red” and “Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero,” which opened with $9.3 million and $21.1 million, respectively. So whatever they have up their sleeve, if anything, it has potential to do numbers on a quiet weekend.

In other animation news, GKIDS has the domestic release of New Gods: Yang Jian scheduled. This is the sequel to the 2021 movie “New Gods: Nezha Reborn,” which made $70.1 million worldwide, most of that in China. In just about every other country, the movie was released on Netflix. “Yang Jian” has already had a theatrical release in China in August of last year, where it made $82.4 million. Whether or not this domestic release of “Yang Jian” is a true wide release in over 1,000 theaters or is in just a couple hundred is something we’ll find out later, but GKIDS films are targeted at more of a niche crowd, so this isn’t going to do huge numbers. GKIDS had one movie last year open over $1 million, that being “Belle” with $1.6 million. The other three were less than $1 million: “The Deer King” ($251,169), “Inu-Oh” ($191,004), and “Goodbye Don Glees!” ($32,096). So that’s the range we’re looking at here.

On the expansion front, Women Talking is scheduled for a wide release this weekend after having underwhelming performances in limited release so far. I talked more about that movie in last month’s preview. Alice, Darling is a psychological thriller starring Anna Kendrick as a woman stuck in an abusive relationship who gains a bit confidence from her two friends and might be out for vengeance. It had its release back at the Toronto International Film Festival last year and got its Oscar qualifying run in December. So it played the game right, but has had no awards fanfare, which doesn’t help it much. But it’ll have a chance to expand wide and see if general audiences will pay attention. Speaking of Oscars, the nominations will be announced on January 24, so those movies that do get nominations will take advantage of that by expanding into more theaters around this time.

January 27 – 29

NEON's "Infinity Pool"

As just mentioned in the most recent paragraph, Oscar nominations are on Tuesday, January 24 and that’ll likely impact this weekend to a degree. Outside that, whatever ends up being the top movie of the last two weekends will likely get another week at top to finish January. At this point, unless “A Man Called Otto” breaks out, that could very well still be “Avatar: The Way of Water” simply due to a lack of competition. The two movies scheduled for a wide release on this weekend certainly won’t do that.

Of the two, the one that’s most notable is Brandon Cronenberg’s Infinity Pool, a movie about a couple who are enjoying a perfectly good stay at an island resort, until they wander outside the resort grounds and find a culture filled with violence, hedonism, and untold horror. The movie stars Alexander Skarsgard and Mia Goth in the lead roles. Brandon Cronenberg has made some small films, like “Possessor” in 2020 and “Antiviral” in 2012, but is probably most notable as being the son of filmmaker David Cronenberg, most notable for movies such as the 1986 remake of “The Fly,” “Dead Ringers,” and more recently “Eastern Promises,” “A Dangerous Method,” and last year’s “Crimes of the Future.” Putting it lightly, it doesn’t appear that either Cronenberg is interested in making movies that appeal to the masses. David Cronenberg is most known for being of the principal originators of the body horror genre and it appears that Brandon is attempting to follow in his footsteps. Point in case, “Infinity Pool” was initially given an NC-17 rating, appealed and lost, then was only given an R after re-editing the movie. It will premiere at Sundance a week early before hitting general audiences this weekend.

The final movie of the weekend and the month is not one I’m really sure exists, or will have much of an impact at all. It’s a horror movie called Fear. Maybe I say that because of that extremely original title, the fact that it’s being released by what appears to be a new distribution company called Hidden Empire Releasing, has a no-name cast, and/or a generic premise where group of friends go for a getaway at a remote hotel and one-by-one are forced to face their worst fear. At least I know that in its favor is that it has a director in Deon Taylor who has made real movies that have made money, but with a filmography that includes “Meet the Blacks,” “Traffik,” “The Intruder,” “Black and Blue” and “Fatale,” that still doesn’t inspire of ton of confidence given that none of those have high remarks from pretty much anyone. The highest box office of the bunch is “The Intruder,” which opened to $10.9 million. But most of the rest were movies that opened below $5 million, which seems to be where this latest is headed. But hey, it will at least be an option at some theaters.