Movie Preview: March 2024

I mentioned at the beginning of last month’s preview that after a very empty January, February seemed ready to get the ball rolling for 2024. Whoops. That didn’t happen. Although I suppose unlike January not having a very large quantity of releases, February did at least have a decent quantity of movies that were put in theaters, they just didn’t do anything to “get the ball rolling.” The one bright spot was the over-performance of “Bob Marley: One Love,” which made $51.5 million in that opening six-day frame from Valentine’s to President’s Day. The rest? Well, “Argylle” and “Madame Web” both failed spectacularly, plagued by toxic reviews. And the rest of the smaller releases were barely a blip on the radar. And even though “Bob Marley” did well, in a month that has shown the ability to have success with movies like “Deadpool” and “Black Panther,” if your highest grossing movie of the month has made just $71.1 million after its second weekend, that’s a not a good sign for the month.

Even though I feel like a broken record in saying that March will actually get the ball rolling for 2024 - it’s the boy who cried wolf at this point, it seems - I actually do have confidence that this will actually happen. There’s a little thing called “Dune: Part Two” that starts the month off and another little thing called “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” that will finish the month off. I’m not saying everything is going to be a smash hit this month, but there seems to be more of a safe floor for success here with those two, as well as a few others sandwiched between, so let’s check it out!

 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 always subject to change.

March 1 - 3

Warner Bros.' "Dune: Part Two"

As mentioned in the intro, the box office is set to get a massive kick of adrenaline in the first weekend of March with the debut of Dune: Part Two. As this point, “Dune” doesn’t require a whole lot of introduction. Frank Herbert’s original novel from 1965 is one of the most popular science fiction novels ever. Herbert went on to write a total of six “Dune” novels before his death in 1986, after which his son Brian Herbert teamed up with science fiction writer Kevin J. Anderson to write a whole bunch more. That means there’s plenty of lore for Warner Bros. to continue this series for as long as they want. The 2021 movie and it’s sequel here find Denis Villeneuve taking on just the first book, splitting that story into two parts instead of doing what the 1984 David Lynch movie did by attempting to cram the entire novel into one 2 hour 17 minute long movie. Compare that to the two Denis Villeneuve movies combining to be a total of 5 hours 21 minutes, with this weekend’s “Part Two” clocking in just 14 minutes short of three hours on its own. Word on the street is that Villeneuve wants to conclude his dive into this franchise with “Part Three” being his adaptation of “Dune: Messiah.” Although that’s not officially confirmed, I’m sure that will be rather soon if the movie performs as well as it’s expected.

Speaking of which, the financial outlook of this “Part Two” should be an interesting one to follow. The first movie opened to $41 million and made $109.9 million domestically and $434.8 million worldwide, which wasn’t bad for a $165 million budget. Typically you want to see a return of 2-3 times your production budget due to other various costs, including marketing and advertising as well as the theaters keeping a percentage of the total, so that first movie maybe didn’t do quite as well as Warner Bros. was probably hoping, but one also has to take into consideration that it opened in 2021 while the box office was still in recovery and while Warner Bros. was releasing all of it’s movies in theaters and on HBO Max simultaneously, so it feels like there was money left on the table there. The movie was very well received, though, and got nominated for 10 Oscars, winning six of them. So there’s some major hype for this sequel. A current 95 percent score from critics on Rotten Tomatoes for “Part Two” suggests that this will live up to the hype and have great word of mouth going forward. The weekend projection has been in the $60-80 million range, with Box Office Pro officially projecting the high end of that with an $80.9 million opening.

There is technically another release here this weekend, but I talked about it with last month’s preview, so you can go back and read that post for more info. But briefly, the final segment of episodes from The Chosen Season 4 will debut, this being Episodes 7 and 8. The expectation is about $3-5 million for it’s opening. While it’s not a lot, Episodes 1-3 wound up making $13.2 million total in its two week run, with Episodes 4-6 finishing with $8.9 million. That means at the end of the run of Episodes 7-8, Season 4 as a whole will have bagged close to 30 million from its theatrical release alone, before it’s regular streaming release. Even though Angels Studios has plenty of funds from this show at this point, that sum alone would probably be enough to fund a Season 5 on its own, so I’m sure they’re happy with these results.

March 8 - 10

Universal's "Kung Fu Panda 4"

Opening in the second weekend of “Dune: Part Two” is the return of another franchise with Kung Fu Panda 4. Perhaps it wasn’t on your Bingo Card to see this franchise return for a fourth film, but in an attempt for DreamWorks Animation to remain relevant after a rough few years, this latest franchise revival makes sense in that it’s one of their most popular franchises and perhaps their most consistent in terms of audience reaction and financial output. So that means Jack Black is back to voice Po and this adventure finds Po needing to step up and become the new spiritual leader of the Valley of Peace while finding and training a new Dragon Warrior to take his place. In the meantime, he also has to deal with a new villain called the Chameleon who has the ability to conjure up villains from the past. Back in 2008, “Kung Fu Panda” opened to $60.2 million and finished with $215.4 million domestically. The second and third movie, from 2011 and 2016, respectively, both opened the $40 million range. The second movie finished with $165.2 million domestically while the third finished with $143.2 million. So diminished returns are probably expected to continue, especially since it’s been eight years since the last one, but the current projections have it opening in the $30-35 million range, which probably won’t be enough to dethrone “Dune: Part Two,” but it will be another healthy addition to the market.

Next up for this weekend is the horror film Imaginary. Not to be confused with John Krasinski’s upcoming family film called “IF,” which stands for “Imaginary Friends” and releases in May, “Imaginary” is also about… imaginary friends. Except in this movie they’re trying to kill people as opposed to trying to become friends in the Krasinski movie. One of the funny Hollywood coincidences. Specifically here, a woman returns to her childhood home and discovers that her imaginary friend she left behind, which appears from the trailers to be in the form of a teddy bear, is very real and unhappy that she abandoned him. This movie is a Blumhouse production released by Lionsgate and Blumhouse has been historically really good at releasing low budget horror films that find success relative to those budgets. And this one is another of the PG-13 variety, which means it has the potential to attract teenage audiences as well. With a reported budget of just $13 million, if this movie hits its projected opening of $15-20 million, it could make that budget back in just one weekend and be another hit for Blumhouse, regardless of what people think about it.

The third and final wide release of this weekend is the Angel Studios movie Cabrini. Angel Studios has had great success from “The Chosen” in the TV realm and had a huge breakout hit last year in “Sound of Freedom.” The success of those two projects alone will probably continue to fund the rest of their smaller projects for quite a long time. And they’ve already had a few of these. In the post “Sound of Freedom” world, they released “After Death” in October, which opened to $2.2 million and made $11.5 million domestically. A couple of months later in December, they released “The Shift,” which made $4.3 million in its opening and $12.1 million total. This movie tells the story of Francesca Cabrini, an Italian-American Catholic religious sister and saint. After founding the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus in 1880, her and a few others immigrated to New York in 1889 in order to help other Italian immigrants in the United States. In 1946, she became the first U.S. citizen to be canonized as a saint by the Catholic Church. Following the pattern of the other two smaller Angel Studios releases, a $2-5 million opening for “Cabrini” is most likely in the cards here.

March 15 - 17

Lionsgate’s "Arthur the King"

After two big franchise films in the first two weeks of the month, the third weekend of March will be a bit of a cool-down week before two more big franchise films in the final two weeks. But there are still three new smaller releases, which will likely be led by Arthur the King. No, this is not another movie adapting the Medieval tale of King Arthur. This is a story about a dog named Arthur, who was found and rescued by an adventure racer named Mikael Lindnord in the midst of a 435-mile endurance race he was on in the Dominican Republic. The dog then continued with him for the entire race. This is based on the book “Arthur - The Dog Who Crossed the Jungle to Find a Home” by Mikael Lindnord himself based on his own experiences. And you know you’ve made it in life when Mark Wahlberg is cast to play you in a film. The movie is directed by Simon Cellan Jones, who has worked mostly in the TV realm, but did direct a movie called “The Family Plan”  for Apple TV+, released this past December, which also starred Mark Wahlberg.

Scheduled for a limited release on March 8 and a planned expansion this week to wide release is the Sundance film Love Lies Bleeding. The three words in that title do a good job of describing three things that happen in this movie. A gym manager falls in love with a body builder. But in the midst of that relationship, there were some lies told that lead to some bleeding. In other words, the couple are dragged deep into the web of Lou’s criminal family, making this part romance and part action thriller. Kristen Stewart plays Lou, the gym manager, while Katy O’Brian plays Jackie, the body builder, with Ed Harris, Jena Malone, and Dave Franco also having roles in the movie. It got positive reaction out of Sundance this year, with a Rotten Tomatoes score of 92 percent with 52 reviews counted, so positive word of mouth could help lead it to be a sleeper hit if general audiences are as high on it as the Sundance audience was. The movie is directed by Rose Glass, who also directed the 2019 horror film “Saint Maud,” which also currently has a 92 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes.

The final movie on the schedule for a wide release is the Anthony Hopkins film One Life. This debuted last year at the Toronto International Film Festival and has since had several international release dates already, but finally hits the United States in what might be a more moderate release rather than a massively wide release. The movie is about Sir Nicholas Winton, a British stockbroker and humanitarian who helped rescue Jewish children who were in risk of being murdered by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. In total he assisted in the rescue of 669 children from Chechoslovakia on the eve of World War II, helping them find legal homes and sponsors in Britain. The movie stars Anthony Hopkins as an older Nicholas Winton, reflecting back on his accomplishments, with Johnny Flynn playing the younger Nicholas Winton.

March 22 - 24

Sony Pictures' "Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire"

If there’s something strange in your neighborhood, who you gonna call? Yep, the Ghostbusters are back in town with Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire. This will be the fifth theatrically released Ghostbusters movie and a direct sequel to “Ghostusters: Afterlife” from 2021, which was in the continuity of the first two 80s movies and thus counted as a “rebootquel,” a movie that was a sequel to the first two, but also rebooted the franchise for a new generation. And it did well enough to justify continuing. Like “Dune,” “Afterlife” also came out at the end of 2021 while the box office was still in recovery mode, but still managed to open to $44 million domestically, legging it out to $129.4 million domestically during the holidays. And now the gang is back and looking at the trailers and the poster, there is a whole lot of ghosts and quite a bit more people in the Ghostbusting squad itself instead of just the traditional group of four. And at least some ghosts are causing a new Ice Age to take place, laying the groundwork for this movie’s conflict. The advertising for the movie has been kicking into full gear, but there doesn’t seem to be quite as much buzz for the movie. Nevertheless, it should be able to at least come close to that $44 million opening of “Afterlife,” even if it’s not likely to do “Dune: Part Two” numbers.

No other new wide releases scheduled for this weekend, but Disney will complete their trio of COVID Pixar re-releases with Luca getting its first ever theatrical release at the domestic box office. But like the other two, “Soul” and “Turning Red,” I’m not sure what the awareness or interest level is for this. “Soul” was re-released for two weeks back in January in 1,350 theaters and made $946,154 total. “Turning Red” actually did slightly better, but in its two weeks in February from 1,560 theaters it made $1.4 million total. I imagine “Luca” will also be somewhere in that realm. This is probably not what Disney was hoping for with this, but I’m also not quite sure what they expected. All three of these movies should’ve been released in theaters when they first came out and not gone straight to Disney+. And expecting people to show up 2-3 years later in theaters when they can watch for free at home does not seem reasonable, nor does it make-up for mistakes of the past.

March 29 - 31

Warner Bros.' "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire"

Finishing off the month, also as mentioned in the intro of this post, is Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire. Straight off the bat, addressing the elephant in the room before we get any further, possibly the biggest obstacle this movie might have to face is the fact that Japan released “Godzilla Minus One” at the end of last year. Even though “Minus One” didn’t make as much domestically as the recent American Godzilla movies, the reaction to it was so positive that it set a new bar for what a Godzilla movie can accomplish, which will put a lot of pressure on “The New Empire.” That aside, the American Godzilla and Kong movies, coined simply as the MonsterVerse, have done fairly well for themselves. After their personal showdown in 2021’s “Godzilla vs. Kong,” the two monsters appear to be teaming up together to fighting an even bigger Kong in “The New Empire.” Financially, 2014’s “Godzilla” opened to $93.2 million, so that’s the potential ceiling of possibilities for this franchise, although each ensuing entry has seen diminishing returns. In 2021, “Godzilla vs. Kong” opened to just $32.2 million, although like “Dune” and “Ghostbusters: Afterlife,” it was again during the COVID recovery phase, but this time in early 2021. Like “Dune,” it was also a day-and-date streaming release on HBO Max. Due to those factors, it barely crossed the $100 million mark domestically in its final run, with $100.9 million. If “The New Empire” can’t manage to have a significant improvement on those numbers, we might have issues. All that said, “Godzilla vs. Kong” did wind up making a total of $468 million worldwide, so those international numbers are the biggest reason why we’re seeing another sequel and could very easily rescue this franchise again.

The final movie coming out in wide release this weekend is In the Land of Saints and Sinners, which is the latest in a very long string of low-budget, low-quality Liam Neeson action thrillers, this one from the same director as the 2021 movie “The Marksman.” Since 2020 alone, this is the 7th theatrically released movie of this style from Neeson. Different names. Different characters. A rotation of directors. Pretty much the same movie. And, hey, if Neeson is enjoying this, then all power to him. But the last four, which were released in 2022 and 2023 - “Blacklight,” “Memory,” “Marlowe” and “Retribution” - all opened to less than $5 million and made less than $10 million total domestically. I wouldn’t expect much to change for this one. The specific premise here is that a damaged father in an Irish village is forced to fight for redemption after a life of sins. Yep. Sound familiar?