And now after adding just one more month into the year, “Bob Marley” is in 5th place on the year, with “Mean Girls” in 6th place, in terms of opening weekends. Yep, March was huge. Both “Dune: Part Two” and “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” opened with over $80 million, doubling the openings of their 2021 predecessors. “Kung Fu Panda 4” surprised with a $57.9 million opening, almost matching the $60.2 million opening of the original, and opening higher than both the second and third movies, which were both in the $40 million. And finally, “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire” nearly replicated the opening of “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” with $45 million (“Afterlife” opened to $44 million. The 2016 “Ghosbusters” opened to $46 million, so this has been an extremely consistent franchise as of late). I suppose not improving over a 2021 COVID recovery film could be seen as a mild disappointment, but this was four very solid openings, which led to the highest overall month of March since 2019.
This is a very solid positive trend for our upcoming Summer movie slate beginning in May. But first we need to get through April? Which is historically usually always a cool down month, the silence before the storm between March and May, barring the random Marvel or Fast & Furious movie getting a jump on the summer, which isn’t the case this year. But there are plenty of titles to talk about on the schedule, so let’s get started!
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.
April 5 - 7
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| Universal's "Monkey Man" |
The biggest competition for the monster movie is looking to be Dev Patel’s new action movie Monkey Man. As an actor, Dev Patel got an Oscar nomination for his performance in “Lion” from 2016, but has also shown up in movies such as “Slumdog Millionaire,” “The Personal History of David Copperfield” and “The Green Knight.” As a director, this is his first attempt at a feature-length film. He’s directed a couple of shorts, but nothing on this scale yet. And by the looks of things, this appears to be an excellent first feature attempt. It’s about a man unleashing vengeance on some corrupt leaders who murdered his mother and continue to do not-so-good things. In an era of action films that have taken heavy inspiration from John Wick, this looks to be another movie riding those coattails. Some have even called this “Indian John Wick.” It premiered at South by Southwest Film Festival last month to strong positive reaction and currently holds an 89 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes. That could lead to positive word of mouth and decent legs over the course of the month.
Nun-related horror movies have been a decently common thing as of late. Perhaps that’s inspired by the huge success of “The Nun” and “The Nun II” from the Conjuring Universe. But also, religious-themed horror films have been a huge thing ever since “The Exorcist” in the 70s. Either way, last month we had “Immaculate,” which I didn’t actually cover in my March preview because it wasn’t initially listed as a wide release. But this month we have The First Omen. Both movies have a similar premise about a young woman looking to begin her ministry to the church only to learn of unexpected darkness. “Immaculate” had a bigger name as the lead with Sidney Sweeney, but “The First Omen” seems to have been getting a bigger marketing push and is in more theaters. “Immaculate” wound up opening to $5.3 million from 2,354 theaters. “The First Omen” will be opening in 3,375 theaters and is projected at a $10-15 million opening.
April 12 - 14
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| A24's "Civil War" |
Latest on the list of remakes that you perhaps didn’t see coming is the remake of Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead, which is based on the 1991 movie of the same title, that only made $25.2 million in its domestic run and was received with mostly negative reviews. Although despite the poor box office and negative reviews, the movie gained at least somewhat of a cult following, enough to stay in the public conscious to some degree. The movie follows a group of kids who are looking forward to a summer of freedom with their mom on vacation, only to be a bit disappointed when learning their mom hired a rather mean and cruel babysitter to watch over them. But, well… as the title suggests, the babysitter dies and the kids are able to then have the freedom they initially desired. The 1991 original had Christina Applegate in the lead role. This remake has a relatively lesser known group of kids in the starring roles with a relatively lesser known director, with June Squibb as the dead babysitter. So the reliance on the original property will be a pretty heavy lean here and thus it’ll test to see how popular the original property has become or perhaps how much people wanted a remake.
April 19 - 21
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| Universal's "Abigail" |
The first of the two notable movies is the horror film Abigail. This comes from the directing duo of Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett, who after finding good success with the 2019 horror comedy “Ready or Not,” a movie about a bride who suddenly has to fight off a bunch of her crazy in-laws during a wedding ritual, were hired on to write and direct the latest two “Scream” movies. And now their next project is about a group of criminals who think they’ve kidnapped a normal girl, the daughter of a powerful underworld figure, only to find out that said girl is a vampire girl. Locked in a house, they somehow have to fight off and survive a crazy, wild ballerina vampire girl. With the big advertising push, the backing of a bigger studio in Universal, and positive vibes from the directing duo, this has the chance to be the biggest horror opening of the year, even if that’s not a huge bar at the moment (currently “The Night Swim” with $11.8 million - which *could* be topped by “The First Omen). A potential comparison on a best case scenario is fellow Universal horror movie that also has a girl’s name as the title, “M3GAN” from January 2022, which opened to $30.4 million.
The other notable movie from this weekend is the latest Guy Ritchie film, The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare, which is certainly one of the more catchy titles of late, which could’ve been even longer as it was based on the 2014 book “Churchill’s Secret Warriors: The Explosive True Story of the Special Forces Desperadoes of WWII,” a book title that definitely does a good job of describing the plot. It’s based on the Special Operations Executive, an organization formed by Churchill in 1940 to perform espionage and sabotage in Nazi-occupied Europe. Although Ritchie’s movie is mostly likely a highly fictionalized version of this organization and events, but with plenty of guns, grenades, explosions and shootings portrayed in the trailer, Ritchie fans probably aren’t here for a history lesson. Ritchie’s most recent movie was also a war film released on the third weekend of April, that being last year’s “The Covenant,” which opened to $6.4 million. The range of $6-10 million is what most of Ritchie’s recent films not named “Aladdin” have done, so that’s the expectation again here.
Sorting through the rest of this weekend’s releases is a bit of an interesting game. Perhaps the next most notable movie is actually the wide expansion of Sasquatch Sunset, which is set to open in limited release on April 12. This is a movie that debuted at Sundance this year, then hit the Berlin International Film Festival in February before then hitting South by Southwest, so it’s had some coverage in the festival circuit that could give it a bit of buzz among the film community. It looks to be a unique, somewhat off-kilter comedy following a Sasquatch family for a year and stars Jesse Eisenberg, Riley Keough, Christophe Zajac-Denek, and Nathan Zellner, the latter of whom is also one of the co-directors. This is maybe not a movie that lands well with mainstream audiences, but this could land with a niche crowd who is looking for a more unique film experience.
It’s also probably not a good idea to completely overlook the latest Crunchyroll release as they’ve done good at delivering surprise hits in the anime realm. This weekend they have Spy x Family Code: White, a continuation of the “Spy x Family” anime TV series that began in 2022. This movie was released in Japan last year and was met with very high acclaim and did well at the box office over there, although how that translates over to the states is a different story that we’re about to see. While anime has surprised plenty, this is a franchise that’s not quite on the level of a “Dragon Ball,” “Demon Slayer” or “One Piece” in terms of popularity. Sprinkled in with the major successes are others that made just a few hundred thousand or a million or two.
Movie No. 5 on this weekend is one that I’m a bit surprised to see listed as a wide release and that’s Villains Inc., which is a movie that could most easily be described as the latest feature-length film from J.K. Studios, the group formerly known as Studio C, a sketch comedy group originating from BYU in Provo, Utah. They most recently made the movie “Go West” last year and that one peaked in just 38 theaters as mostly a Utah release. Local Utah distributor, Purdie Distribution, only rarely has released movies in the triple digits, their highest being “The Stray” in 639 theaters, followed by “Meet the Mormons” in 303 theaters. Most movies they do are under 100 theaters. But theater count aside, this is directed by Jeremy Warner, a member of the group who also directed “Go West,” and has Mallory Everton and Jason Gray featured most notably on the poster, although most of the group are likely to show up in some roles, big or small. Mallory and Jason are joined on the poster by “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” alum Colin Mochrie in a movie that seems like a fun comedy about villains trying to be the best villains they can be.
The final movie here is the one that I’m not 100 percent sure actually exists. Every once in a while there’s a movie like this that’s technically listed as wide release on the-numbers.com’s list that I feel obligated to bring up. This one is Wildfire: The Legend of the Cherokee Ghost Horse. If this is a real movie, it’s about a girl who feels guilty about the tragic death of her parents and moves with her brother to their grandma and begins training for a horse competition when a mystery horse shows up and befriends her. The reason I’m not 100 percent this movie exists is because the only trailer I could find is one that was released 10 months ago, only has 7.4K views, and is a really low quality trailer that makes the movie look really bad. Outside that, no signs of much marketing for this. Maybe this hits a couple hundred theaters and makes a few bucks from some family audiences, but outside that I don’t have much hope, but I could be wrong.
April 25 - 27
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| MGM's "Challengers" |
The final movie of the month comes from the Christian pop duo For King & Country as they tell the story of their older sister Rebecca in the movie Unsung Hero. Specifically this is written and directed by Joel Smallbone, who along with his brother Luke form the duo of For King & Country, which began as Joel & Luke in 2007 before changing their name a few years later as what they currently are and becoming Christian music superstars. But again, this is not a movie about them. This is a movie about their sister, who had a much earlier start, releasing her first studio album in 1991 and is known professionally as Rebecca St. James. The movie is also about their parents trying to hold their family together through various struggles. Faith-based movie meets musical biopic is a formula that could work well if the Christian audience shows up. Lionsgate is pushing their connection to their 2018 movie “I Can Only Imagine,” which was a similarly themed Christian movie that did very well, opening to $17.1 million and making $83.5 million total. Best case scenario is that it could push “Challengers” as the biggest new release on a quiet weekend. Or it could follow the trajectory of fellow Christian movie “Ordinary Angels,” which opened to $6.2 million in February.
