We’re getting this month’s preview out a tad bit late. Sorry about that. Life happens sometimes. However, Labor Day weekend was covered in last month’s preview, so we only missed one weekend. That means we’ll preview the massive opening of “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” and then preview what’s coming up in the next few weeks!
To wrap up summer, though, we actually finished off on yet another strong note. For August standards, this was actually the best August since 2016 with $892 million. August 2016 saw the release of “Suicide Squad” while August 2014 saw the release of “Guardians of the Galaxy” and those are the only two August months that have crossed a billion at the domestic box office. Without a massive release like that (“Deadpool & Wolverine” was released at the end of July and only about half of its earnings came in August after that massive opening weekend), August can only go so high, but the fact that this August even out-grossed the pre-COVID August months from 2017–2019 is a positive sign for the current state of the box office. In addition to the second half of the earnings of “Deadpool & Wolverine” helping a lot, as that movie won the No. 1 spot in all but one week during August, “It Ends with Us” getting a surprise $50 million debut was huge, followed by a $40 million debut for “Alien: Romulus.” We finished with the typical late-August dumping ground affair, but those three titles alone boosted this month to positive heights. And after a weak first month of the summer, we’ve been on a roll!
That streak has already continued with “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” in September, which we’ll get to in a second. But there’s also a few other promising titles on the schedule that should continue to help this be a better than normal September as we then lead to the holiday portion of the year. So let’s get started!
As always, release date information for this post is courtesy of boxofficepro.com and the-numbers.com. Both sites are back up while I’ve been doing this post after a bit of a kerfuffle last month. But I still had a little bit of help from some other sites. But yes, the movies listed are the ones currently scheduled for a wide release in the United States and Canada and are always subject to change.
September 6 – 8
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| Warner Bros.' "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" |
As mentioned a couple times in that intro, this month started off with an absolutely massive opening as Beetlejuice Beetlejuice took in $111 million in its opening weekend. Now if you had asked me early in the year, I would’ve had a bit of hesitation towards this movie. Legacy sequels to movies from the distant past have a very poor track record as a whole and I didn’t see this as a movie that would work out. But then the advertising kicked in and buzz started to build. There seemed to be genuine excitement for the movie, so it seemed like I could end up being wrong. And I definitely was. When early tracking started coming out, it was much higher than I would’ve guessed and that just kept going up and up as the release date got closer. If you would’ve told me that “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” would’ve cracked a $100 million opening, I would’ve called you crazy, but here we are. And it wound up as the second highest opening weekend in September history, behind only the 2017 release of Warner Bros’ “IT,” which opened to $123.4 million. In fact, as “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” is also Warner Bros., it’s also worth of pointing out that Warner Bros has found a gold mine in this second weekend of September, starting with “IT” in 2017 and has taken advantage of this weekend almost every year since. Normally September isn’t seen as a big box office month, but Warner Bros learned that this isn’t true. And Disney even debunked the Labor Day curse in 2021 with “Shang-Chi.” So the September curse is more of a self-fulling prophesy on the end of Hollywood than anything. Make a good movie that people are excited about and people will show up, regardless of where it is on the calendar
The interesting thing is that the first “Beetlejuice” wasn’t even a massive hit back in 1988. It opened with $8 million in March of 1988 and held well to make $74.5 million domestically. Times were different back then, of course, but it did alright for its time. Press the inflation-adjusted button on the-numbers.com’s movie comparison section and it reveals that said numbers would be equivalent of a $21.1 million opening and a $195.4 million domestic total, which adjusted for today’s ticket prices. But in the 36 years since it’s release, it’s become a favorite of many people. It certainly helped put both Tim Burton and Michael Keaton on the map. The actor/director duo would go on to release “Batman” the following year. And as you can see, “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” wound up going the way of “Top Gun: Maverick” when it comes to legacy sequels. “Maverick” opened to $127.7 million domestically after also coming out 36 years after its predecessor, an exact year total between both “Beetlejuice” movies. So every once in a while this works really well, which is why Hollywood keeps trying. It makes you wonder if Disney is really regretting throwing the likes of “Hocus Pocus 2” and “Disenchanted” straight to Disney+ instead of putting them in theaters. Now I doubt that “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” holds quite as well as “Top Gun: Maverick,” but I imagine it will hold quite well throughout the entire Halloween season.
The main story was “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” of course, but there was a second wide release this weekend to briefly mention. Opening way down in 10th place with just $1.7 million in its opening weekend was the A24 horror movie The Front Room. This movie stars Brandy Norwood as a very pregnant teacher who quits her job right before having her baby, which aligns with her very busy husband being forced to invite his stepmother to live with them following his dad’s death. When the baby comes, this leaves lots of solo time with Mom, baby, and mother-in-law. And this mother-in-law is very crazy and unhinged. The movie is directed by the Eggers Brothers, Max and Sam Eggers, the younger brothers of director Robert Eggers, director of “The Witch,” “The Lighthouse” and “The Northman.” However, the two younger brothers didn’t quite achieve the success as older brother in their directorial debut, which was this movie, “The Front Room,” as the movie earned a 52 percent from critics and a 38 percent from audiences from Rotten Tomatoes. And despite opening in 2,095 theaters, as mentioned it opened in 10th place with $1.7 million, a per theater average of $794. That means this will be gone from theaters rather quickly, especially since the quantity of releases in the following weeks is rather high.
September 13 – 15
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| Universal's "Speak No Evil" |
Currently scheduled for wide release in this upcoming second are two major wide releases and a small handful of moderate releases. Of the two major wide releases, the American remake of Speak No Evil appears poised to earn the title of top new debut. It’s not going to come anywhere near the second weekend total of “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” but second place should be pretty easy to snag. It just has to earn $8-10 million to get that spot. Anyways, “Speak No Evil” was a 2022 Danish psychological horror film that scored a solid 84 percent score from critics on Rotten Tomatoes. It debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2022 and was released in Denmark two months later in March. It then had a scattered worldwide release that even stretched to earlier this year for some markets, but it hit a very limited U.S. release in September 2022. But because we’re allergic to foreign films here in the United States, of course there is an American remake just over two years after its initial debut. The original movie was about a Danish family visiting a Dutch family on what was supposed to be a nice weekend before things start unraveling. This remake, which stars James McAvoy in the lead, is just about two families, one family visiting the other family in the countryside, before learning that the host family might have a bit of a dark side to them. Box Office Pro in their weekend projections has this pegged in the $15-20 million, which would be solid for a horror movie this year, many of which have struggled to hit $10 million. But the advertising has certainly been very heavy. I personally feel I’ve seen this trailer 100,000 times over the last 4-6 months, so the awareness might be decently high here, compared to others.
The other major wide release this weekend sees Lionsgate taking a swing at another action film with The Killer’s Game. Ever since striking gold with “John Wick” in 2014, Lionsgate has been trying hard to find the next “John Wick” and they’ve not been shy on just about every trailer for a new action movie they’ve released since then to remind people that they are the studio that brought you “John Wick.” And this month’s version of that stars Dave Bautista in the lead role as an assassin who is given a terminal diagnosis and decides to put a hit on himself to avoid the inevitable pain, only to learn afterwards that the diagnosis was a mistake. This causes him to have to fight off an army of assassins that have now come to kill him. The other connection that this movie has to “John Wick,” outside sharing the same studio, is that the director here, J.J. Perry, was the stunt coordinator for the first two “John Wick” movies, as well as a long list of other movies. “John Wick” was famously directed by a duo of stunt dudes who hadn’t directed a movie at that point, so “The Killer’s Game” is looking to follow that path as well. J.J. Perry has directed before – he did the 2022 movie “Day Shift.” But that’s it. Yet he does have over 150 stunt work credits, so Lionsgate is really looking to catch lightning in a bottle twice. Although they’ve been having a really bad year thus far as they’re responsible for both “Borderlands” and “The Crow” within the last month alone. And although “The Killer’s Game” doesn’t have a budget as big as those two, it’s also looking at an opening around $4-8 million, which isn’t exactly what they’re hoping for.
Going into the handful of moderate releases, first we have the comedy documentary Am I Racist?, which stars conservative political commentator Matt Walsh go undercover as a D.E.I. expert, performing several pranks under the guise of educating others about racism. This isn’t the first time Matt Walsh has done a documentary like this. In 2022, he did a similar documentary titled “What Is a Woman?” The difference here is that “Am I Racist?” is actually being released in theaters, in 1,517 theaters to be exact. It’s actually the first time a documentary from The Daily Wire is being released theatrically, so it’s a bit of a new adventure for them. It’s also not too often that documentaries get a wide theatrical release, but every once in a while a political documentary shows up. Election season is a prime target for that. So this documentary will look to fight for a spot somewhere in the top 10.
And speaking of polarizing media, another moderate release this weekend is God’s Not Dead: In God We Trust. This is actually the fifth movie in this particular franchise. The first movie was a breakout hit in 2014, making a final domestic total of $60.8 million after opening to $9.2 million. And it’s been downhill since that, financially speaking. The second one made a third of that total, with $20.8 million total domestically, while the third and fourth barely registered, the fourth playing in just over 500 theaters and making $1.2 million total. But the filmmakers here are doing their best to spread the good, anyways. Your mileage may vary in how effective they’re being. Many people who are active Christians take issue with how polarizing these movies are, portraying everyone who is a non-believer in a dark and sometimes evil light, which might not be the best way to earn converts, but to each their own, I suppose. The movie actually opened a day early on Thursday. As of me typing this, there’s not an official theater count released, or Thursday totals, but in my local market, at least, it’s playing in more theaters than the third one did, for what’s that worth. So it might do a tad bit better than that one, but no guarantees.
The final scheduled wide release is an anime from GKIDS called Dan Da Dan: First Encounter, which is the first three episodes of the anime TV series “Dandadan” packaged together and released in theaters. This is based on the manga that began in 2021 and currently has 15 volumes released, with volume 16 set to be released in October. The anime TV series adaptation has not yet been released, but is also scheduled to start in October, so if you manage to catch this packaged movie in theaters, that’s a preview or sneak peak of the show. Although I’m not exactly sure how wide this is being released. Like with “God’s Not Dead,” there’s not an official theater count yet, but it is in both Cinemark locations in my area, so it should be in a decent number of theaters. All three of these moderate releases will be fighting for spots in the top 10, so we’ll see by the end of the weekend how they play out.
September 20 – 22
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| Paramount's "Transforms One" |
In the third weekend of September, “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” will of course still be a major player, but it seems likely that it will be surrendering the top spot to the latest movie in the Transformers saga, Transformers One. Dating back to the first live-action Michael Bay movie in 2007, the Transformers movies have been fairly consistent hits. Although franchise fatigue finally kicked in with the fifth movie, which only made half as much as the third and fourth, both of which were billion dollar movies worldwide. Since then, Paramount has been trying to creatively figure out how to spark some life into this saga. And although new directors not named Michael Bay led to better reviews, “Bumblebee” in 2018 and “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” in 2023 weren’t exactly the smash hits that Paramount is used to, both making in the $400 million range worldwide, and $127.2 million and $157.3 million domestically, respectively. Their next attempt here is going back to the beginning with the origins of Optimus Prime and Megatron, who were once friends known as Orion Pax and D-16. The other huge difference here is that this is an animated movie, which takes us back to the style of the original series to begin with. Now animated Transformers stuff has existed in both movie and series form, but they’re usually streaming releases as opposed to theatrical releases. We also have a large voice cast. And a different voice cast than the other movies. This includes Chris Hemsworth, Brian Tyree Henry, Scarlett Johansson, Keegan-Michael Key, Jon Hamm, Laurence Fishburne, and Steve Buscemi. Given that this is animated, the ceiling is probably much lower than the first handful of Michael Bay movies, but positive early reviews could lead to opening close to the $61.0 million opening of “Rise of the Beasts” last year.
Also opening in wide release, but on a much lower financial tier, is the horror film Never Let Go. Unlike “Speaking No Evil” from weekend 2, I’ve not actually seen this horror movie advertised a whole ton, which is a bit surprising considering that this is Lionsgate releasing and Halle Berry starring. But perhaps Lionsgate was too busy putting their focus on “Borderlands” and “The Crow” that they neglected to much effort into this one. They also have “Megalopolis” next weekend, which is looking to be another big-budget failure, but we’ll get to that in a second. I guess we’ll see what the Halle Berry star power has to say in 2024, if word gets out that she has a movie coming out. Anyways, the movie is about a mother and her twin sons living off in the woods somewhere, having suffered the torment of a malicious spirit for many years. The IMDb premise states that one of the boys starts doubting the existence of the evil and that triggers no so good things happens, while the trailer focuses on them all holding onto a rope that’s connected to their house that they’re never supposed to let go of. The movie is directed by Alexandre Aja, director of “The Hills Have Eyes” from 2006 and “Crawl” from 2019, as well as a handful of other low-budget, poorly reviewed horror films that maybe Lionsgate wouldn’t be so keen on putting on the trailer.
The final release of this weekend is a movie that is making quite the wave among the festival crowds at the moment and that is a little indie film called The Substance. This stars Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, and Dennis Quaid and is about a fading celebrity who decides to use a black market drug that temporarily creates a younger, better version of herself. That’s just the surface-level premise here and what’s beneath the surface is something that I have no idea. But Joey Magidson from the Awards Radar podcast said that this is about as out there as it gets that goes places you’ll never expect and won’t believe if he told you. It can be categorized in the body horror genre with some stuff that apparently is going to incite quite the reaction from audiences. Demi Moore specifically is getting quite the buzz with this performance that could lead to Oscar nominations. From the critics and festival crowd, the movie currently sits at a 91 percent on Rotten Tomatoes from 78 reviews. However, how this translates from critics and festival goers to general audiences is a story yet to be seen. If the movie ends up being as insane and crazy as advertised, I imagine that this could be quite the polarizing movie. I’m also not sure exactly how wide this is being released. I could see this being a much more moderate release, but we’ll see.
September 27 – 29
DreamWorks Animations' "The Wild Robot"
In the final weekend of September, DreamWorks is coming to play with their latest animated movie, The Wild Robot. Trailers for this movie have sparked quite the positive reaction as it looks like DreamWorks has a real tearjerker on their hands. The movie is adapted from book series of the same name and is about a robot that gets shipwrecked on an uninhabited island and has to learn to adapt to the surroundings, while building relationships with the animals on the island. The movie just recently had its premier at the Toronto International Film Festival and so far the reviews have been unanimously positive. I’m not sure this Rotten Tomatoes score will hold, but as of me typing this, it’s currently at a 100 percent. Trailer buzz followed by unanimous praise could very well lead to a sleeper hit. Although with this being an original movie from DreamWorks as opposed to a franchise film, this might be a movie that relies on strong legs and positive word of mouth rather than a massive opening weekend. The last movie that DreamWorks released in this spot was “Abominable” in 2019 and that opened to $20.6 million. The highest opening weekend for an animated movie in September is “Hotel Transylvania 2” with $48.5 million. The highest non-sequel for DreamWorks is “Kung Fu Panda” with $60.2 million.” So that’s the ceiling here. But Office Pro has it projected at a $25-30 million opening weekend, yet that Long Range Forecast was posted prior to the reviews coming out, so perhaps that shifts a bit.
I referenced this briefly in the previous weekend, but the other notable release from this weekend is another high-budgeted disaster in the works from Lionsgate and that is Megalopolis. The asterisk here from a Lionsgate perspective is that they’re not footing the bill here. This is the decades in the work passion project from prestigious filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, director of “The Godfather” and “The Godfather Part II.” He’s had an idea for this movie dating as early as the 1977 and attempted to start developing it in 1983. There is a decades long story to be told as to what has happened along the way and if you want that full story, you’re going to have to look that up. Nevertheless, the short version is that it got delayed and postponed for a long list of reasons before Coppola finally got around to reviving it in 2019. Then COVID hit, so more delays. But filming finally took place in 2022 and the reports are the Coppola spent $120 million of his own money to get this done. And it didn’t have a distributor until earlier this year, after it finally premiered at Cannes in May. The story behind this movie finally getting made is probably going to wind up being a whole lot more interesting than the movie itself. Early reactions are that it’s certainly a movie worth seeing, for better or for worse. Mostly for worse. Film fanatics might feel obligated to see the latest movie from the director of “The Godfather,” but it might be a hard sell for casual audience. And despite being the director of “The Godfather,” Coppola has spent the last few decades making a long list of movies that have been critically panned, so this movie not being received well is not exactly surprising. And is probably not the comeback Coppola was hoping for.
And finally, we’ll finish off this month with another handful of smaller films. I’m guessing these movies might range from a couple of hundred to maybe a surprise release in 1,000-1,500 theaters, depending on if marketing actually kicks in. First off, Lionsgate isn’t done just yet. They have another horror film called Bagman. The movie stars Sam Claflin as a guy who has to now deal with a mythological villain from his childhood stories called Bagman that is coming back to haunt him. Kinda like the Boogeyman from your childhood turning out to be real. I’m guessing there’s no relation to the 1982 video game of the same name. But that’s what I found when I tried to search this out on Wikipedia. The movie doesn’t have it’s own Wikipedia page. Just a trailer with just under 500,000 views at this point that I haven’t seen played in theaters. I doubt Lionsgate put much of anything into marketing machine for this one.
Next up is another horror film, this one from IFC Films and Shudder called Azrael. This movie’s trailer has about as many views as “Bagman,” but it does have a Wikipedia page, so that gives it an edge. And, in fact, humans have seen this movie as it was released earlier this year at the South by Southwest Film Festival in March to decently positive reaction, currently carrying a 71 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes. Azrael is a mythological character that is the canonical angel of death in Islam as well as appearing in the apocryphal text of Apocalypse of Peter. Generally speaking, it’s God’s angel of death. How much of that lore this movie takes from is yet to be seen, I suppose. Or has been seen by some, but I don’t know the answers myself. The premise follows a world in which no one speaks and a woman named Azrael has escaped and is hunted down to be sacrificed to an ancient evil. So even if it’s not the actual lore of Azrael, they have some sort of lore set up here. If this doesn’t play in a ton of theaters, I’m guessing it’ll be on Shudder before too long. Shudder has done that with a few movies this year. Team up with a smaller studio to give some movies a brief theatrical release before putting them on their own streaming service.
The final moderate release I’ll mention is a movie called Lee, which is a bit of a funny thing to hunt down on the internet. Search “Lee” online and see how many possible things come up before you find what you’re looking for here. Anyways, this comes from Roadside Attractions and is about an American photographer named Lee Miller, who was a fashion model that became an acclaimed war correspondent for Vogue magazine during World War II. This movie portrays a pivotal decade in her life that resulted in some pretty famous pictures of World War II. The movie stars Kate Winslet, Alexander Skarsgard, Andy Samberg, Andrea Riseborough, Marion Cotillard, and Josh O’Conner, so it definitely has the prestigious cast to be something. But it was released at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival and hasn’t seemed to gain much of any traction since then, so I’m not sure this will be much of a thing.
