Normally April ends up being the calm before the storm. The quiet month in between two blockbuster filled months via March and May. But Mario said we’re having none of that and might singlehandedly push the month to being as big as its two neighboring months. More on that in a second. The rest of the month’s releases will make this about par for the course, though. So not a ton of help for Mario in terms of big releases. But as also the case with April, there’s a lot to talk about in terms of quantity. Whether or not many humans will be particularly interested in comparison is yet to be seen. But nevertheless we will discuss the options.
Noting that the weekend of March 31 – April 2 was covered in my March preview a month ago, we’re only one weekend behind here. So we’ll recap what just happened this past week, while previewing the upcoming three. 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 a wide release in the United States and Canada and are subject to change.
April 7 – 9
We live in an era where
studios are looking frantically for the next big movie franchise to cash in on.
And while many of these mines of content have been explored quite a bit,
multiple times over in certain cases, there is one mine that had almost not
been touched. Nintendo. For the record, this was not out of a lack of desire
from studios, but rather came from a stingy stance on the side of Nintendo
themselves. But the gate has now been opened and Universal and Illumination may
have struck absolute gold. We’re of course talking about The Super Mario Bros. Movie,
which, if you haven’t heard the news, just experienced what one might call
cinema-changing box office revenue. I don’t need to inform you that this movie
exists or tell you anything about what it’s about. The numbers say you were
well aware and probably have already seen it at this point. But nevertheless,
the staggering opening definitely deserves a bit more reflection on what it
means than I might normally give.
Illumination's "The Super Mario Bros. Movie "
Here’s the numbers. After opening on Wednesday, April 5, “Super Mario Bros.” opened with a 5-day total of $204.6 million, with $146.4 million of that coming on the traditional 3-day opening.
In regards to expectations, or at the least what I was expecting heading in, I knew very well that this had a lot of buzz going into it and would do very well, especially given that Illumination has an excellent track record, combined with the fact that they were adapting one of the most popular fictional characters ever. I was looking at the highest opening weekend ever for Illumination, which was “Minions” in 2015 with $115.7 million. There were two other instances where Illumination also opened an animated movie above $100 million and that was “Minions: The Rise of Gru” last year with $107.0 million and “The Secret Life of Pets” in 2016 with $104.4 million. So conceivably it would make perfect sense for “Mario” to hit somewhere in that range. But the fact that it opened on a Wednesday made me wonder if its box office would be a bit more spread out, which often happens for movies getting a 5-day weekend. Thus I had my eye on “Despicable Me 2,” which also opened on a Wednesday, making $84.2 over the traditional 3-day weekend, but $143.1 million over the 5-day weekend. And a tad bit for inflation since 2013 and somewhere around $100 million for the 3-day made sense.
Box Office Pro’s official projection leading into Wednesday of last week was $112 million for the 3-day and $164 million for the 5-day. So you can imagine the shock that was experienced as numbers started to roll in and they were blowing everything out of the water, even the most generous of expectations.
Obviously looking at numbers, this was the highest opening weekend for Illumination with just that 3-day total. But on a broader spectrum, $146.4 million is the second highest opening weekend for any animated film, behind only the $182.7 million of “Incredibles 2.” It would be third if you counted the 2019 “Lion King” remake as animated, but I personally do not. It’s not perfectly fair to compare worldwide openings, in my opinion, because not all movies open in the same set of countries, but nevertheless it’s definitely worth noting that “Mario” opened with a worldwide total of $377.6 million, which is the biggest opening ever for an animated movie, besting “Frozen II,” which opened to $358.5 million. And, the final notable number before I move on, “Mario” is now the highest grossing video game adaptation at the domestic box office. That’s not a comparison of opening weekends, but final domestic totals. Yes, the $204.6 million in five days is more than “Sonic the Hedgehog 2,” the previous record holder, did in its entire run - $190.8 million.
And the crazy thing is, animated movies directed at family audiences often have great holds as parents with kids don’t always rush out opening weekend. Maybe they did in this instance, but this has a chance to wind up as the highest grossing movie of 2023, or at least close to it. The final domestic total of “Incredibles 2” was $608.6 million. And given that “Mario” got an A on CinemaScore and a 96 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes means that fans are loving it. And that bodes well for its box office prospects, especially since it has no direct competition all month. The closest competition is a month away with “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” on May 5. And even that is not the exact same target audience.
All of this also means that you’ll be seeing a lot more of Nintendo in the future, whether that be all from Illumination or if Nintendo decides to spread the love more is yet to be seen. But it’ll happen. And other studios that don’t get Nintendo directly will try their hardest to replicate this in any way they can. Yes, video game adaptations happen a lot, but like “The Avengers” in 2012 sparked a new wave of superhero films across the board, “Mario” is certain to do the same with video game adaptations.
Oh? There were two other
movies that were given a wide release this past weekend?
Amazon's "AIR"
We’ll definitely be more “normal” in my analysis and projections for the rest of this post, but nevertheless on its own scale, the Ben Afflect directed AIR also had a solid showing. Sure, “Mario” probably made more in a few hours than “AIR” did in its entire weekend, but the $14.5 million debut in third place was above the $10-12 million it was expected to do. It also opened on Wednesday April 5, making $20.2 million over the 5-day. Since you may be less familiar with this than with “Mario,” the story here follows Matt Damon as Sonny Vaccaro and Ben Affleck as Phil Knight as the two Nike businessmen push hard to sign Michael Jordan to a shoe deal prior to his rookie year in 1984. Spoiler alert, it worked. Air Jordans are a shoe that exist. And the gamble paid off Jordan being considered the greatest to ever play. But this is all about the journey of how they got there.
The response here has been positive enough that this would definitely feel like an Oscar contender had it come out at the end of the year. But given that our most recent two best picture winners were both from the first part of the year, maybe there’s a new trend brewing that may give Affleck and co. a chance with “AIR”?
The third movie of the weekend wasn’t as lucky as the previous two. Opening down in 10th place from 819 theaters, with $570,512 was Paint. Sure, less theaters obviously makes for less box office, but a per theater average of $697 is not good when you at least want that to be in the couple thousand range. The movie is… NOT a Bob Ross biopic, but is at least aimed to be a parody of sorts of one. Owen Wilson stars as a fictional painter named Carl Nargle with a giant afro and a very popular painting show. He seemingly has it all going for him until a younger painter starts to steal his spotlight. Outside of being largely ignored by audiences in the theaters it was playing in, its 32 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes from critics and 56 percent from audiences seems to say those who saw won’t help its word of mouth. This might be gone in record time and possibly on streaming somewhere soon.
April 14 – 16
While the second weekend of “Mario”
may be positioned to earn as much in weekend No. 2 as some predicted it would
in its opening weekend, there are a large handful of films that will be
fighting for positioning somewhere in the top five or top 10. Leading the way
will likely by Renfield, the latest vehicle in the more recent Nicolas
Cage renaissance. Cage has been acting since the 80s and even got an Oscar win
under his belt in the mid-90s from “Leaving Las Vegas,” so he’s always been
popular to a degree, but after the well-received dramatic role in “Pig” in
2021, followed by the super Nic Cage meta comedy “The Unbearable Weight of Massive
Talent,” he’s definitely on the upper swing once again. And “Nicolas Cage plays
Dracula in a movie” might be the only sentence needed to get his fans out once
again. Perhaps the most genius play following “Massive Talent.” Despite the
positive reaction from fans, “Massive Talent” opened to just $7.1 million,
finishing with $20.3 million. So “Renfield” might not blow the doors off the
gates, but positive buzz around Cage and solid early reviews that are just now
coming out as I type this should help this to be a decent moderate hit.
Universal's "Renfield"
The other film making the most buzz of the new releases, at least in terms of an actual advertising push, is the horror film The Pope’s Exorcist. The bigger horror film of the month will come out next weekend, but nevertheless what makes this particular one slightly more than just your traditional throwaway horror film is that it stars Russell Crowe in the lead role. Crowe plays Father Gabriele Amorth, an actual Italian Catholic priest, ordained in 1954 and appointed an exorcist in 1986. In 1990 he founded the International Association of Exorcists along with five others and by 2013 he made the claim of having performed 160,000 exorcisms in his career, counted by each individual prayer or ritual, not the number of victims. The movie is based on his two memoirs he wrote and specifically follows his investigation of the possession of a young boy that results in him uncovering an old conspiracy that the Vatican has apparently tried to cover up. Again, this is not the horror film of the month that is likely to make much of a dent, but these low budget horror films often don’t need much, anyways.
Hoping to play spoiler on the weekend is the anime Suzume. This comes from director Makoto Shinkai, who is notable for directing the films “Your Name.” and “Weathering with You,” the former of which became quite the buzzy phenomenon in 2016, at least on the international scale where it earned $349.7 million worldwide, only about $5 million of which came from the domestic box office. “Weathering with You” followed that up with $189 million worldwide and $8 million domestically in 2019. Following suit, “Suzume” has already earned $132.2 million worldwide after beginning its worldwide rollout back in November 2022. So yeah, this director’s movies haven’t done much on the domestic side of things, but it’s definitely put his name on the map and fans of anime will certainly be curious about his next outing, which is a bit of a fantasy/action adventure following a girl named Suzume who meets a mysterious young man who is opening and closing that are causing disasters all over Japan.
Yes, there are three other films also scheduled for some sort of wide release, although how big of a wide release they are is something we’ll find out in a few days. They might be smaller releases of a few hundred or close to a thousand. Nevertheless, Sweetwater sees lesser known actor Everett Osborne star as Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton, who was the first African American to sign an NBA contract. Cary Elwes and Richard Dreyfuss are in supporting roles. Mafia Mamma is an action/comedy starring Toni Collette as an American mom who inherits her grandfather’s mafia empire in Italy. And finally, Nefarious is horror/thriller about a serial killer who, on the day of his scheduled execution, gets a psychiatric evaluation where he claims he is a demon and also claims that the psychiatrist will commit three murders of his own. Six smaller movies opening on one weekend means that some of these will be left in the dust in hopes to maybe gain a new life on streaming in the future.
April 21 – 23
The horror film in late April
that looks like it actually might have a strong life to it is Evil
Dead Rise. This is the return of the Evil Dead franchise, which
began in 1981 with “The Evil Dead,” which actually only grossed $2.4 million in
the United States, but has since become one of the biggest cult classics and is
often thought of as one of the best horror films ever made. The movie was
directed by Sam Raimi, long before his Spider-Man fame. Raimi also directed
both of the original sequels, “The Evil Dead II” in 1987 and “Army of Darkness”
in 1992. Fast forward 20 years and in 2013 there was a reboot titled “Evil Dead”
and a TV series that ran from 2015 to 2018 called “Ash vs Evil Dead.” So this
month’s “Evil Dead Rise” will be the fifth film in the franchise and is
directed by Lee Cronin, who was reportedly hand-picked by Raimi to write and
direct this film, which is about the reunion of two sisters that is cut short
when they find a strange book in one of their apartments that unleashes
flesh-possessing demons. So far so good with this sequel as it debuted to
positive reaction the South by Southwest film festival in March and currently
holds a 96 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes.
Warner Bros.' "Evil Dead Rise"
A second Guy Ritchie film in two months will hit theaters and yes, this one has his name in the title to remind people it’s his movie. That is Guy Ritchie’s The Covenant, which I will refer to simply as “The Covenant” from here on out. In March, “Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre” was released after quite the wild journey to finally hitting theaters, which resulted in a big flat dud, opening to just $3.1 million and currently standing at $6.5 million. Obviously Ritchie will be hoping “The Covenant” will at least do a little better than that. And even though it has his name in the title, some have pointed out that it almost looks like the least Guy Ritchie film, who is known for movies such as “Snatch” and “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” before directing the Robert Downey Jr. “Sherlock Holmes” films. “The Covenant” is, rather, a straight up war film starring Jake Gyllenhaal as a U.S. Army sergeant who was saved by an Afghan interpreter following an ambush. After learning that said interpreter was not given safe passage to America, he is headed back to the war zone to repay the debt and retrieve him and his family.
Rounding out the weekend are two other smaller films. First up is Chevalier, a festival film that began at the Toronto International Film Festival last September and has bounced around to other various festivals before landing in traditional release here in April. This is based on the life of composer Joseph Bologne, Chevalier de Saint-Georges, who lived in France in the late 1700s, around the time of the French Revolution, and was the illegitimate son of an African slave and a French plantation owner. He rose to improbable heights as a composer before then falling out of favor due to an ill-fated love affair. The other film is Beau is Afraid, which might actually be in more of a limited release at this time – reporting is mixed on how big of a release it will have this weekend. But this is the third feature-length film for director Ari Aster, whose previous two films are “Hereditary” and “Midsommar,” two wildly divisive and intense horror films. “Beau is Afraid” follows Joaquin Phoenix as an anxiety-ridden man named Beau who embarks on a journey home after his mother dies. Early reviews just coming out seem to reflect this being another crazy journey of a film for Ari Aster, which at the very least might spark curiosity from those who checked out his previous two films.
April 28 – 30
We finish the month off on
perhaps one of the more precarious weekends of the year, the weekend before the
beginning of Hollywood’s summer movie season, which will this time around be
kicked off with Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.” Opening in the
shadow of that might not be the greatest idea, but nevertheless a movie with
perhaps the largest subtitle I’ve seen will be giving it a go and that’s Big
George Foreman: The Miraculous Story of the Once and a Future Heavyweight
Champion of the World. And with that subtitle as more of a movie
description, I almost want to call that good. “Future” heavyweight champion is
a curious word choice, but this is nevertheless a biopic of the famous boxer
George Foreman, who was also an entrepreneur, minister, and author. The
entrepreneurial side obviously saw him find great success with the George
Foreman grill, which very well could be the main reason some know his name.
Foreman is played in the movie by actor Khris Davis and sees Forest Whitaker as
a supporting character. Coming the month after “Creed III” found great success,
this has a chance of being a decently timed movie if that genre success spills
over.
Sony Pictures' "Big George Foreman"
Battling “George Foreman” on this weekend is a movie that is actually primed to come out on top based on presales and that is Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. This is based on a popular novel published in 1970 by Judy Blume. The protagonist is a sixth grader named Margaret who goes on her own journey of faith in a coming-of-age drama as one of her parents is Christian and the other is Jewish. Young Margaret is played by Abby Ryder Forston, while her parents are played by Rachel McAdams and Benny Safdie, with Kathy Bates playing the grandma. Author Judy Blume has apparently had several offers for her book to be adapted that she has rejected. Finally winning the sweepstakes to write and direct was Kelly Fremon Craig, whose other directed movie was “Edge of Seventeen,” another highly praised coming-of-age drama. According to Box Office Pro, current presales reflect similarly to “Where the Crawdads Sing,” which opened to $17.3 million last summer.
Rounding out the month will be the war film Sisu. This is a Finnish film that is another film that debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival in September of last year, then debuted in its home country in January 2023. So its domestic release is a later than other countries and maybe not the highest priority for Lionsgate, the studio that purchased its domestic distribution rights. But nevertheless, the movie is set in Finnish Lapland during World War II and follows a gold prospector living on his own trying to find gold. When he is successful, he attempts to bring it to the nearest town, but is instead met by a Nazi platoon who attempt to attack him and take it for themselves, not knowing that the prospector was also a skilled fighter during a previous war, which leads to some brutal clashes.
