Movie Preview: June 2025

After a slow start to the year, the box office has officially caught fire the last two months. April managed to be a good primer for the summer movie season, which then led May to kick off the summer with a bang. A record breaking Memorial Day weekend led the way, with both “Lilo & Stitch” and “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” doing very well. We went from one of the worst Memorial Day weekends in 2024 to one of the best in 2025. Top that off with “Thunderbolts*” doing decent Marvel numbers to start the month off – albeit not quite as much as they maybe wanted, along with another $123 million in May for April’s breakout hit “Sinners,” as well as a $100 million outing for “Final Destination: Bloodlines” as that became the highest grossing movie of that franchise by quite the margin. “Karate Kid: Legends” missed the memo that we’re supposed to all be doing well, but even with that failure, the month as a whole nearly managed to hit $1 billion, finishing at $967.5 million domestically. For comparison, last May only earned $550.4 million, so this was a huge improvement.

Shall the momentum then carry on into June? Well, it’s a distinct possibility. It’s interesting, though, comparing 2024 to 2025. In 2024, as mentioned, we started the summer off very slow, then had a breakout June that hit $965.9 million before July went higher and crossed the $1 billion mark. I don’t want to predict that things will be flip-flopped here with May and June before July heads to the stratosphere with “Jurassic World: Rebirth,” “Superman,” and “The Fantastic Four: First Steps.” But I’m currently seeing just one movie that looks like a guaranteed hit in June, with a handful of others that have a lot of questions marks surrounding them. Maybe all the question marks wind up surprising and becoming breakout hits and lead to another great month, but I’m not so sure, so let’s dive into specifics here so that you know what I’m talking about here.

As always, release date information for this post is courtesy of the-numbers.com and boxofficepro.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.

June 6 – 8

Lionsgate’s "From the World of John Wick: Ballerina"

We start June off with one major release and a handful of smaller ones. With that one major one, it’s Lionsgate and they’re going to make it absolutely clear what universe this movie is from with the title From the World of John Wick: Ballerina. Director Chad Stahelski spent the majority of the last decade doing nothing but John Wick movies and came up with a four-movie saga that got increasingly more popular as it went on, to the degree of “John Wick: Chapter 4” opening to $73.8 million domestically and finishing with $187.3 million domestically and $447.3 million worldwide. If you watched the movie, you’ll note that clearly Stahelski meant for that to be the final movie in his saga, but Lionsgate, thinking with their bank account, was clearly not ready for the franchise to be over. So while they continue to try to get Stahelski and star Keanu Reeves to return for an official fifth movie, it’s off into the spin-off realm we go! Taking place at around the events of the third film, hence Reeves making a cameo appearance that’s probably a much bigger part of the advertising than it should be, this movie follows a character named Eve, played by Ana de Armas, who is a trained assassin seeking revenge after her father’s death. The movie is the first movie in the franchise not directed by Stahelski as it’s Len Wiseman, director of the Underworld movies and 2012’s “Total Recall” remake. That might have John Wick fans slightly nervous, but one hopes that Wiseman took enough notes from Stahelski to make this at least a satisfactory entry in the universe, which based on early reaction seems to be the case so far.

In regards to box office, the challenge here will be to see if “Ballerina” can dethrone “Lilo & Stitch,” which after opening to $146 million over the 3-day Memorial Day weekend, and $182.6 million over the 4-day weekend, officially fell 58 percent in weekend 2 to make $61.8 million. One might expect it to hold slightly better in weekend 3. As such, another 50 percent drop would put it in the $30 million range. If it holds slightly better, than somewhere between $30-40 million would be where “Lilo & Stitch” would be expected to hit. And that’s the exact range that Box Office Pro has for “Ballerina” in their current weekend forecast, so this could be a competitive weekend if that holds true. Spin-offs rarely hit the heights of the original series, so of course “Ballerina” isn’t expected to come anywhere near $73.8 million opening of “John Wick: Chapter 4” or even the $56.8 million opening of “John Wick: Chapter 3.” But if it does hit in the $30 million range, that would put it in the realm of “John Wick: Chapter 2,” which opened to $30.4 million.

As mentioned, “Ballerina” is the only major release of the weekend, but we do have a couple of medium sized releases coming through. The first one of that bunch is actually the nationwide expansion of Wes Anderson’s latest movie The Phoenician Scheme. This opened in 6 theaters on the final weekend of May, taking in $560,499, for an impressive per theater average of $93,417. Wes Anderson has always been a much bigger hit with the platform releases rather than being a huge mainstream draw. In fact, a lot of his movies have had a much slower roll-out with his niche appeal, but “The Phoenician Scheme” goes straight from 6 theaters to 1,678 theaters, which nearly identically matches the strategy of 2023’s “Asteroid City.” That movie opened to a slightly higher $853,382 in 6 theaters, then expanded to $1,675 theaters in its second weekend and made just over $9 million. With “The Phoenician Scheme” opening slightly smaller, maybe that sets it up to also make slightly less with $6-8 million or so, but we shall quickly see. Those who have seen the movie describe it very much as a Wes Anderson film and if you’ve seen any of his previous films, you’ll know what that means. His type of movies are basically their own genre and he doesn’t seem to have much of a desire to skew from that. They’re also always an acting party, with many actors perfectly content to show up in just a scene or two. Benecio del Toro is the top billed cast member for this movie, but below him on the poster is Mia Threapleton, Michael Cera, Riz Ahmed, Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Mathieu Amalric, Richard Ayoade, Jeffrey Wright, Scarlett Johansson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Rupert Friend, and Hope Davis. And that’s not all the cast. Just the ones who managed to get their name on the poster.

Clocking in just under “The Phoenician Scheme” in regards to theater count is the horror film Dangerous Animals, which opens in 1,636 theaters. This is a movie whose theatrical distribution is being handled by IFC Films before it eventually heads over the streaming service Shudder, which is a release strategy taken by a variety of horror films from last year and this year, including “Stopmotion,” “Late Night with the Devil,” “In a Violent Nature,” “Oddity,” “Azrael,” and “The Rule of Jenny Pen.” Of that group, the two movies that match the theater count that “Dangerous Animals” is getting are “Late Night with the Devil” and “In a Violent Nature,” which opened to $2.8 million and $2.1 million, respectively. The buzz for “Dangerous Animals” has felt slightly muted, but reviews have been solid so far at 84 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. The movie stars Jai Courtney as a shark-obsessed serial killer, while Hassie Harrison plays a girl named Zephyr who gets kidnapped and wakes up on his boat and has to figure out how to escape before she gets fed to the sharks.

The last movie I’ll mention here for this weekend is Dan Da Dan: Evil Eye. I say movie here, but this is a collection of episodes from the anime series “Dan Da Dan” (I’ve also seen it stylized as “Dandadan”), which began airing last year and has a second season coming soon that will be released by either Crunchyroll, Netflix, or Hulu, depending on where in the world you live. Last year the first three episodes of season 1 were released theatrically as “Dan Da Dan: First Encounter,” while “Dan Da Dan: Evil Eye” this weekend is the first three episodes of season 2. In North America, it’s Hulu that’s releasing the series, while GKIDS is handling the theatrical event. An official theater count hasn’t been reported as of me typing this, but “First Encounter” this past September was released in 610 theaters domestically and earned $925,506, so I’d naturally expect something similar here.

June 13 – 15

Universal’s "How to Train Your Dragon"

In the intro of this post, I mentioned that it feels like there is one movie this month that feels like a guaranteed hit. That comes this weekend with Universal’s live-action remake of How to Train Your Dragon. I’m not really sure an introduction to this needs to be made, but “How to Train Your Dragon” was a 2010 animated film by DreamWorks Animation loosely based on the 2003 novel that is the first in a series that is currently 12 books deep. So there’s no shortage of source material here. DreamWorks’ movies capped off as a trilogy, with the second and third movies being released in 2014 and 2019, respectively. There were also three different TV shows that started on Cartoon Network in 2012, then transitioned to Netflix, Peackock, and Hulu. So this is definitely a franchise that remains quite popular and has many directions of where to go if they continue to do live action movies. Is it too soon to do a live action remake of a movie that came out in 2010? I suppose the answer to that question is up for debate, but just last month audiences said yes in a big way to “Lilo & Stitch,” which was a 2002 release. Disney is going for the 2010s next year with a live-action remake of “Moana,” so it looks like both the 2000s and 2010s are both now on the docket when it comes to these live-action remakes. “How to Train Your Dragon” this month will be a critical step in studios confirming from audiences that this is the direction they want studios to go. Don’t want it? Answer is simple. Don’t go. But the trailer reaction so far has been very strong and Box Office Pro is projecting this to open in the realm of $80-100 million, so the indication here is that audiences are wanting these remakes, despite what you might gather from people online. And if this does indeed work, DreamWorks might get all sorts of ideas of what to do next, beginning with a sequel to this one, already scheduled for June 2027.

Like the first weekend of June, “How to Train Your Dragon” is the lone major wide release, but we also have a trilogy of movies opening below it. And with two of them, you might think that we’ve entered awards season when you look at the titles. On that note, we’ll start with the much buzzed about release of The Life of Chuck. This movie debuted last year at the Toronto International Film Festival and wound up winning the People’s Choice Award at the festival. Every year since 2012, the winner of this award has gone onto being nominated for best picture at the Oscars, with a few best picture winners being in that club. So it was a big deal that “The Life of Chuck” beat out “Anora,” which did win best picture, and “Emelia Pérez,” which was nominated for 13 Oscars, those two movies being the two runners up for the People’s Choice Award at TIFF. It also made it a bit of a surprise that NEON chose to NOT release the movie during awards season last year, but instead put it out in the summer of this year. But current buzz, based on continued strong reaction to the movie, suggests that this is likely to be a film that has strong longevity throughout the year and winds up on the awards season ballot for this upcoming Oscars. The movie is directed by Mike Flanagan and is based on a Stephen King novella. Based on those two names you might think that this was a horror film. But it is not. This is described as a life-affirming, genre-bending drama telling three chapters in the life of an ordinary man named Chuck Krantz, the adult version of whom is played by Tom Hiddleston, with Chiwetel Ejiofor, Karen Gillan, and Mark Hamill getting the main co-star credit on the movie’s poster.

The other movie that makes it feel like we’re heading into awards season is the movie Materialists, which is the latest movie from director Celine Song. Now I mention this in awards context, not necessarily because of any buzz the movie itself is getting, but because Celine Song’s first movie was the drama “Past Lives,” which did get nominated for both best picture and best original screenplay. “Materialists” is her second directorial feature, so there’s been a certain level of buzz about what she’s doing next. And that next movie here looks like its an homage to the early 2000s romantic comedy, as Dakota Johnston plays a matchmaker currently struggling with her own romantic life, torn between an old ex played by Chris Evans and a new lover she met played by Pedro Pascal. One might wonder, given the success of “Past Lives,” as to why this isn’t coming out later in the year. But “Past Lives” wound up being a summer release as well. And awards or not, perhaps Celine Song is perfectly happy to use her success with her previous movie to simply provide a good summer rom-com for audiences. While its not necessarily projected to be a huge hit, this nevertheless has the pieces on paper to be a sleeper hit, or at least be a movie that remains part of the general conversation longer than just its initial theatrical run.

With the final release of the weekend, to heck with awards or giant summer blockbusters, we’re going Samuel L. Jackson in a Western with the movie The Unholy Trinity. We’ve got buried secrets in an 1870s Montana town that leads a young man to return to claim his legacy, while the Sheriff is determined to maintain order and a mysterious stranger is bent on destroying it. Get out your guns, horses, and appetite for adventure with Pierce Brosnan as the Sheriff, Samuel L. Jackson as the chaotic mystery man, and the somewhat newcomer Brandon Lessard playing the young man caught in between the two. This comes from distributor Roadside Attractions, who are known for their smaller and medium sized releases, so this won’t be a huge release. But hey, if you hate the trend of remakes and don’t want to give DreamWorks your money, this is one of three original movies hitting your local theater that you can see instead. Can’t say Hollywood is out of ideas when you don’t put enough effort into seeking out their original ideas that they release.

June 20 – 22

Pixar's "Elio"

Last June it was Pixar that really blew up the box office with their massive hit, “Inside Out 2.” A year later at nearly the same spot in the calendar, they are back with their latest original flick Elio. This is a movie about an Earth kid named Elio Solis who has a dream of being abducted by aliens. One day his wish comes true and he’s beamed up to the “Communiverse,” and interplanetary organization with representatives from many galaxies and they mistakenly think Elio is Earth’s leader, which sends him on quite the space adventure where he has to figure out who he is and where he’s truly meant to be. Pixar has actually been advertising this one for two years now. The initial teaser came out in June 2023, ahead of its initial scheduled release date of March 2024, but that was pushed back to this month due to the SAG-AFTRA strike in 2023. Despite having the trailer out for a long time, though, this appears to be a Pixar movie that’s having trouble gaining traction, not helped by the fact that it has “How to Train Your Dragon” looming right before it the weekend before. In all the history of Pixar, there’s only been six of the 25 theatrically released movies (“Soul,” “Luca,” and “Turning Red” went straight to Disney+) that opened below $50 million. When you adjust for ticket price inflation, that number goes from six movies to two movies: “Onward” and “Elemental.” And even then, “Onward” was hurt severely by being released in the early stages of COVID and only got two weeks in theaters before theaters shut down. An opening in the $60-80 million range used to be common for a Pixar original as Pixar was a strong enough brand on its own to get people excited to see whatever they put out, but that seems to be a thing of the past for Pixar.

There’s probably a variety of reasons for that. The biggest being that we’re simply in a phase where audiences are less interested in seeing original films and are more likely to show up for the sequels and remakes. But also, the fact that Disney sent those three Pixar originals straight to Disney+ during COVID got people out of the habit of seeing Pixar in theaters. Disney has been trying to make up for that and get people to go back to theaters for all of their movies really, but for the case of Pixar, it hasn’t exactly worked. “Elemental” ended up holding well after its very disappointing $29.6 million opening. And of course “Inside Out 2” went through the stratosphere, but again that was a sequel to a very popular film as opposed to an old-fashioned Pixar original. Pixar could really use a win to maintain upward momentum, but tracking from Box Office Pro has it pegged in the $35-45 million range. And given the lack of buzz on this, that seems to be a range that makes sense. And if that range is correct, that might only be good enough for No. 2 on the weekend, behind the second weekend of “How to Train Your Dragon.” This might be a movie that will have to rely more on good reviews and word of mouth, much like “Elemental” did. But nevertheless, for those who are tired of sequels and remakes, here’s your opportunity to support an original animated film. If “Elio” can’t gain any traction, then you’ll know why moving forward there will be more movies like “Toy Story 5,” “Coco 2,” and “Incredibles 3” (three movies currently in production) rather than more originals like “Elio.”

Competing with “Elio” this weekend will be another horror franchise revival, with the movie 28 Years Later. This will be the third movie in this series, with “28 Days Later” coming out in 2003, followed by “28 Weeks Later” in 2007. It hasn’t quite been 28 years since the second movie in real life, but it has been 18 years, which is a significant gap between sequels. When it comes to horror franchise revivals, the most recent example comes from just last month with “Final Destination: Bloodlines” not only successfully bringing the franchise back, but also becoming the highest grossing entry in the franchise, even when you do adjust for ticket price inflation. And that had a similar gap as “Final Destination 5” was released in 2011. The question here is, has the “28 Days Later” franchise gained enough popularity over the years for horror audiences to be excited for this new release? Fans of the movies have reason to be excited as Danny Boyle, director of the first movie, has returned to write and direct this new one. The movie also returns Alex Garland as a writer. Not only did Garland write the original, but he’s gained plenty of popularity since by directing movies like “Ex Machina,” “Annihilation” and last year’s “Civil War.” So on paper this seems poised for success. And to be the highest opening in the franchise is actually a very low bar. The original only opened to $10.1 million, while the sequel opened a bit lower to $9.8 million. Adjust for ticket price inflation and those adjust to $18.9 million and $16.1 million. So a $16-18 million range seems like a reasonable hurdle to clear, providing adult counter-programming for the two big family films at the top of the box office.

Two family films at the top of the box office will be supplemented by two adult films opening below them. Those are the aforementioned horror film “28 Years Later” and the final movie of this weekend, Bride Hard. For those looking for alternate entertainment, but who don’t like horror, “Bride Hard” is an action comedy where Rebel Wilson plays a secret agent attended her best friend’s wedding. When the wedding gets overtaken by a mercenary group, Rebel Wilson reveals her secret identity to her friends and fights like mad to stop the mercenary group and save her friend’s wedding. In times of old, comedies like this had the potential to become huge summer hits. My initial thought went to movies like “Spy!” from 2015 or “Heat” from 2013, two Melissa McCarthy comedies that opened to $29.1 million and $39.1 million, respectively, both holding well to gross over $100 million domestically. In our current post-COVID age, though, comedy is a genre that does much better on streaming as opposed to theatrically. And thus as a best case scenario, you’ll instead get movies like Jennifer Lawrence’s “No Hard Feelings,” which opened to $15 million in the summer of 2023 and finished with $50.5 million. Or in a worse case scenario, you’ll get movies like “Joy Ride” from that same summer that opened to $5.8 million, despite great reviews. Or a slightly different style of action comedy, “Novocaine” from this year that opened to $8.8 million. “Bride Hard” does have name recognition with its stars and if it gets good reviews, that’ll obviously help. But it still seems like a movie that hits in the $8-12 million range.

June 27 – 29

Universal's "M3GAN 2.0"

The final weekend of June has quite the unique showdown before July comes around and sees the likes of “Jurassic World: Rebirth” and “Superman” dominate the market. I’m honestly not sure which of these two new movies from this weekend will come out on top, but my gut instinct says to mention M3GAN 2.0 first. The first movie became quite the sensation in January 2023, being a horror movie about an A.I. doll that was programmed to be a child’s best friend and protector, while helping out the parents quite a bit. And because A.I. in Hollywood movies never turns out well, M3GAN’s programming became quite faulty as she became a little too protective and resorting to quite the extreme violence in the process. What was initially thought of as a potential throwaway January horror film, not only got great reaction out of audiences and critics, but opened to $30.4 million and finished just shy of $100 million domestically with $95.2 million. Now Universal is confident enough with this in regards to franchise potential that they made the decision to release the sequel as a big summer horror film. M3GAN is now upgraded and better than ever, ready to cause more chaos? Horror sequels have always had a shaky reputation at the box office, but yet it’s perhaps the most commonly franchised genre because they often come with a much lower budget. Point in case, “M3GAN” made, as mentioned, $95.2 million domestically, as well as $181.8 million worldwide. The budget was just $12 million. So with that in mind, “M3GAN 2.0” doesn’t necessarily need to do super well to be a success, but given how popular the movie was, and how viral her dancing went on Tik Tok, a sequel has the potential to blow, especially considering the PG-13 rating leaves it very open for the teen market. This could easily improve upon the first movie’s $30.4 million opening.

If “M3GAN 2.0” underperforms, or does well, but not as well as the first, then the other movie that could very easily win out this weekend is F1: The Movie. Despite being released two weekends after Father’s Day, this does nevertheless give off vibes as the most “Dad Movie” of the summer. The premise is about a former Formula One driver who is forced into retirement after a major accident who is asked to come out of retirement to help mentor a new rookie driver. The movie has Brad Pitt in the lead role and is directed by Joseph Kosinski, director of “Top Gun: Maverick.” I suppose in an absolute dream scenario, Kosinski would love to have another hit on the level of “Top Gun: Maverick,” but the real easy and likely much more realistic comparison would be to fellow racing movie, “Ford v. Ferrari,” which opened to $31.5 million in November 2019. That movie went onto make $117.6 million domestically and $224.4 million worldwide, so it held really well. It also got a handful of Oscar nominations that year. Could a summer release with all the IMAX screens lead to a much higher opening in the $50-60 million range? Seems like a possibility. It does make it interesting though as both major releases this weekend, “M3GAN 2.0” and “F1,” both have easy comparisons that opened at almost the exact same level. Will they both hit that range? Will one be a breakout hit, while the other one disappoints? That will obviously be determined by audience reaction and overall reviews. And regardless of what happens, they each will have just five days in theaters before “Jurassic World: Rebirth” roars onto the screens on Wednesday, July 2.

While the aforementioned duel should be interesting to follow, there is a third movie getting released and that’s the A24 drama Sorry, Baby, which had its debut earlier this year at Sundance, getting very positive remarks as it currently has a 96 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes after 50 reviews. The movie is the feature-length directorial debut of Eva Victor, who wrote and directed this movie, but also stars in the movie as the lead role of a woman named Agnes who went through a traumatic event and has to figure out how to move forward. The movie has been described as being unfiltered and frank in both its tragedy and comedy, balancing the line of being darkly humorous as well as extremely poignant. A summer film with breakout potential for all audiences? Perhaps not. But smaller films out of festivals are scattered across the release calendar as options for those who desire something unique or original. Giant blockbuster films aren’t the only ones released during the summer months.

Movie Preview: May 2025

Summer doesn’t technically start until June 20 this year, the day of the summer solstice. But the beginning of summer can be a bit ambiguous, right? If you’re in school, summer in your mind probably begins when school ends. Others might be a bit simplistic and say summer begins June 1. However, in Hollywood we’ve decided that the summer movie season begins on the first weekend of May, and is traditionally kicked off by the release of the newest big Marvel movie. That wasn’t quite the case last year due to the strikes throwing Marvel off their groove in 2024, but they’re back on track now as “Thunderbolts*” has officially been released, meaning the summer movie season has begun!

The first quarter of the year got 2025 off to an absolutely miserable start in regards to box office performance, especially with March being one of the lowest grossing Marches ever, not counting the two COVID years. But as we’ve consistently seen in the post-COVID universe, people still ARE willing to come out to the movies. They just might be a tad bit more selective with what they choose to come out to support. April isn’t usually the month that lights a fire in the box office. Historically speaking, April is often the silence before the storm. But that was not the case this year as “A Minecraft Movie” blew the lids off the box office. That wasn’t the only success, though. “Sinners” has become a box office and cultural phenomenon as it had one of the highest openings ever for an original horror film, then had the third best hold ever for any movie that opened north of $40 million. In addition to that, “The King of Kings” was a solid Easter hit, “The Accountant 2” had a solid opening weekend in the final weekend of April, and “Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith” had a very successful one-week run as it celebrated its 20th anniversary. At $875.3 million total, that’s the fourth highest April on record, behind 2018 and 2019 when Marvel released “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Avengers: Endgame” respectively, as well as April 2023 when “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” became a mega hit.

Last year saw May 2024 get last summer off to a miserable start before things really caught fire in June and July. While this year also sees June and July feel quite loaded, May does seem a lot more promising as well. As mentioned, we have “Thunderbolts*” to talk about to start things off, as well as what looks like a very crowded Memorial Day weekend, with a few wild cards in between, so let’s dive in and see what exactly this first month of the summer has to offer!

As always, release date information for this post is courtesy of the-numbers.com and boxofficepro.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.

May 2 – 4

Marvel's "Thunderbolts*"

As per tradition, A Marvel movie is kicking off the summer box office. This year that Marvel movie is Thunderbolts*, asterisk in the title very much required. This is a movie that some have stated is parallel to Marvel’s version of “Suicide Squad.” While not completely accurate, DC’s “Suicide Squad” is a team of villains brought together by Amanda Waller to fight a more dangerous villain. If they win, cool. Mission accomplished! If they fail, they were all villains, anyways, so no harm no foul. The parallel to Amanda Waller here would be Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Although the biggest difference is that she’s initially trying to get them all killed so that she avoids impeachment, as she’s the CIA director who is facing some significant allegations. The group of them includes Yelena, John Walker, Ghost, and Taskmaster, with a mysterious character simply named Bob also showing up in the room. Once they realize what is actually going on, the group of them band together to escape and are then later joined by Bucky Barnes and Red Guardian to form this rag tag group of secondary Marvel characters who set out to help stop the latest crisis that poor New York is facing in this universe. The other big difference between “Thunderbolts*” and “Suicide Squad” is that these characters aren’t really villains, but are rather morally questionable protagonists who have all been going through a rough time in form or another. While none of them are Marvel A-Listers, by the end of the movie they hope to be a major part of the newest phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

In regards to what this latest Marvel movie will do on the financial side of things, it’s worth noting that their biggest openings and box office hits have traditionally come with their sequels or Avengers films. While none of these characters are new entries to the MCU, per sé, typically the first entry in a new Marvel sub-franchise doesn’t perform as strongly as the others. And given that there’s no A-List characters to headline the movie, it’ll have a harder time attracting the more casual movie going audiences. The expectation going into the weekend has been an opening in the $75-85 million range domestically, so around the same realm, or perhaps a bit lower than “Captain America: Brave New World,” which opened to $88 million back in February. So far, though, the response to “Thunderbolts*” has been quite positive. As of me typing this, the movie currently has am 89 percent score from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, as well as a 95 percent audience score. Compare that to the 48 percent score that “Brave New World” got from critics and this does suggest that “Thunderbolts*” should have solid word of mouth that leads to better legs. “Brave New World” just barely scraped and crawled its way past $200 million domestically after suffering a steep 68 percent drop in Weekend 2. Even if “Thunderbolts*” doesn’t match the opening weekend of “Brave New World,” my thinking is that it’s set up to have a stronger hold, perhaps finishing in the $225-250 million range domestically, which would be similar to “Shang-Chi” in 2021, which opened to $75.4 million and finished with $224.5 million.

While “Thunderbolts*” is the only major wide release this weekend, there are two moderate releases hitting theaters. Nicolas Cage fans will be happy to see The Surfer, arriving in 884 theaters. Cage plays a dad who simply wants to take his son surfing on the beach when a group of locals humiliates him and causes a conflict that keeps rising in this latest psychological thriller. Based on the trailer, it seems like another movie where Cage is having a lot of fun with his role that looks to continue to build on the recent Nicolas Cage renaissance. With over 100 reviews counted, the movie stands as certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with an 86 percent score from critics. It’s not playing wide enough to truly break out, but it has the potential to have a longer life beyond theaters as more Nicolas Cage fans discover it.

On the opposite side of that, playing in 794 theaters is the horror movie Rosario. The movie only has 21 reviews counted as of me typing this, so it appears to be even less on the radar, but two-thirds of those are positive, so not a bad sign for an under-the-radar horror film. This is the feature-length directorial debut of Felipe Vargas, who prior to this has only worked on a bunch of shorts. This movie is named after its lead character Rosario Fuentes, played by Emeraude Toubia, who heads over to her grandmother’s apartment following her grandmother’s sudden death, only to find occult artifacts tied to dark generational rituals that lead to supernatural occurrences that take over her grandmother’s body. Again, it’s not going to make much of a box office impact, but it’s a title for horror fans to discover, either now or down the road. Felipe Vargas also has his next couple of projects lined up, so this appears to be a jumping off point for his career as well.

Finally Fathom Events will be re-releasing Monty Python and the Holy Grail back into theaters for its 50th anniversary. The catch here is that this is apparently a two-day event only on Sunday, May 4th and Wednesday, May 7th. It does appear to be a wide release on those two days, but in my local theater it is only listed for one showing on each of those days, so for those who want to catch this in theaters, options are very limited. But they are available.

May 9 – 11

RLJ Entertainment's "Clown in a Cornfield"

As mentioned previously, it is tradition to begin the summer movie season with a big Marvel movie. But it’s also tradition for other studios to avoid that Marvel movie’s second weekend with their major titles. So in regards to major summer blockbusters, those will return on Memorial Day weekend and we’ll certainly have plenty to talk about there. In regards to the second weekend of “Thunderbolts*,” which will play here without any direct competition, it’s my guess that it’ll have a pretty decent hold here, at least in comparison to “Captain America: Brave New World,” which opened to $88.8 million, but then fell 68 percent in its second weekend to make $28.2 million. Flipping over to “Shang-Chi” that I referenced prior, that movie opened to $75.4 million, but then only fell 54 percent to make $34.7 million in its second weekend. That seems like a plausible comparison here, given the positive reaction to the movie so far.

While it’s correct that “Thunderbolts*” has no major competition this weekend and no new blockbuster releases, there are four smaller new releases and it’s been a bit of a fun game to try to figure out which of those will win out as they all fight for spots in the top 5 or top 10, or if any of them will even hit $10 million this weekend. Box Office Pro has them all pegged in the $2-4 million range, so they might not even hit $5 million, so your guess might be as good as mine here. However, for the sake of a fun headline picture for this weekend, I’ll start with Clown in a Cornfield. And I’ll give you one guess as to what this movie is about. If you guess that it’s a slasher horror about a clown… in a cornfield, then ding ding! You’re correct! The careers of real clowns ended a long time ago, possibly when actual killer clowns started showing up, but if not then, Stephen King with Pennywise in his novel “IT,” later adapted into a TV miniseries and the two movies in the 2010s, certainly did clowns no favors. Recently, in addition to Pennywise coming back to theaters, we also have Art the Clown becoming a thing in the “Terrifier” movies. I’m not sure if this clown has a name, but “Clown in a Cornfield” is based on a 2020 novel of the same name, with the movie being directed by Eli Craig, director of “Tucker and Dale vs. Evil,” and has a very early critics score of 94 percent, indicating that this could be a fun crowd pleaser. This is also a Shudder movie, so if it doesn’t connect with audiences in theaters, it’ll be available shortly on that streaming service.

Next up, I’ll put my bets into a recognizable brand name with the movie Juliet & Romeo, which likely has flipped the names in the title to make it easier to find in search results, given that there’s already been a million adaptations of Shakespeare’s “Romeo & Juliet.” What sets this one aside from the rest. Well, from the costume designs and set design, it appears to have gone back to the old Shakespeare setting of the story rather than being a modern adaptation. However, that’s not the biggest thing that sets this apart. This is a musical. An original pop musical… for better or for worse. Old-fashioned setting. Modern pop music. That’s the perfect blend, right? At the very least, this is certain to connect with a specific demographic of humans and there’s nothing wrong with aiming for a specific niche like that. To me this seems like a thing that teenage girls would be the most interested in. Now the question is if there’s awareness that this actually exists. And if so, can Briarcliffe get them to actually come out and see it. To date, the biggest release for Briarcliffe is the 2022 Liam Neeson action movie “Blacklight,” which opened to $3.5 million, so the bar is not particularly high for this to be their biggest opener. Their most recent wide release was “Magazine Dreams,” which opened to $701,365 from 815 theaters in March. Prior to that, “My Dead Friend Zoe” opened to $740,088 from 780 theaters in February.

Of the four new releases, the movie that comes from the biggest studio, and also has the most trailer views, and that is Lionsgate’s Shadow Force. This is an action film starring Kerry Washington and Omar Sy, who play a couple on the run from a group called Shadow Force. According to the trailer, the No. 1 rule of Shadow Force is that you don’t leave Shadow Force. And, well, our lead couple did. They fell in love and left the group. And now they’re getting hunted by the group. In comparison to the other two movies already mentioned, “Shadow Force” is disadvantaged by not having a catchy premise like a killer clown or being based on a highly recognizable property, but Lionsgate does have more resources to get the word out on this. And thus if adult males especially have an itch for an action film, this could satisfy that. Although this has been released already in a few countries and the initial reactions don’t seem particularly great. So if reviews end up being bad, that could cause any on the fence to decide against it and save their money for something else coming later.

It could come back to haunt me, but my current bet for last of these four is the action comedy Fight or Flight. While the trailer might make this seem like the best of the bunch, I mostly base this off the fact that this comes from Vertical Entertainment, whose highest opening is the horror film “The Exorcism,” which opened to $2.5 million last summer in 2,240 theaters. Vertical Entertainment also opened “In the Lost Lands” this March, which opened to just $1.1 million from 1,370 theaters, despite being a Paul W.S. Anderson flick with a $55 million budget. Early theater counts estimate that “Fight or Flight” will open closer to that rather than the 2,000+ theaters of “The Exorcism.” The advantage this movie has it that it has already come out in many countries, the earliest being Germany in December 2024 and the reaction has been that it is a lot of fun. Many have compared it to “Bullet Train,” but on a plane. The movie stars Josh Hartnett on a bit of a career revival following “Oppenheimer” and “Trap.” This movie has him playing a mercenary who is hired to track someone down on a plane and protect her, only to find out that everyone else on the plane is trying to kill both of them. If this does connect with audiences, I could see this possibly opening up at least above the previous two, but if awareness for all four of these movies isn’t particularly high, that might not be the biggest bar.

May 16 – 18

Warner Bros.' "Final Destination: Bloodlines"

After a weekend of a bunch of smaller releases, the biggest blockbusters of the month are still a week away, but this third weekend does still have one major franchise film and that is Final Destination: Bloodlines, which is the sixth movie in the Final Destination franchise, which began in 2000 with “Final Destination.” The general idea here with this franchise involves a person receiving a premonition about a major disaster that’s about to occur and warning their group of friends to avoid that in order to survive, only for the survivors to all die one by one in a series of bizarre, unrelated accidents after the fact, showing that they’re all doomed to die one way or another. The franchise has been praised for its unique take on death as well as it’s creative, over-the-top death sequences. As far as how well this sixth movie will do, it’s worth pointing out that Box Office Pro has it projected to open to $40-50 million. And while Box Office Pro has been all over the map with their long range forecasts as of late, it’s worth noting that they were right on with “Sinners,” so if they’re accurate here, this could be another huge horror opening to boost the summer. However, when I look at the past trends for this franchise, after the first movie opened to $10 million, the second, third, and fifth movie all opened consistently between $16-19 million. The highest opening was the fourth movie, titled simply as “The Final Destination,” which opened to $27.4 million. Now given that it’s been 14 years since the most recent one, it’s worth looking at those openings when adjusted for ticket price inflation. In which case, according to the-numbers.com, the second, third, and fifth movies adjust to a range of $25-33 million, with the fourth one adjusting to $41.3 million. Is there enough interest in a franchise revival for “Bloodlines” to be the biggest opening yet, as Box Office Pro projects? Or is that $25-33 million range a more realistic take?

The other notable release of this weekend is a bit of a unique project with the psychological thriller Hurry Up Tomorrow. If that title sounds vaguely familiar to you, it’s because it’s also the title of The Weeknd’s sixth studio album, which was released back in January. This movie was made as a companion piece to the album and stars The Weeknd himself, credited as Abel Tesfaye, his actual given name, along with Jenna Ortega and Barry Keoghan. The movie is directed by Trey Edward Shults, director of “Waves” and “It Comes at Night,” and was written by Shults, The Weeknd, and Reza Fahim, co-creator of the TV miniseries “The Idol” that The Weekend starred in. The movie itself is described as The Weekend playing a fictionalized version of himself, an insomniac musician on the verge of a mental breakdown who is pulled into an existential odyssey by a mysterious stranger. If you’ve listened to his music, you’ll probably note that his albums often have a lot more to say than your average album these days and his music videos have often felt cinematic, so this feels like a natural progression, but yet it’s still unique enough to not have much of a precedent in regards to how well this movie will do or if it’ll be able to attract more than just fans of The Weeknd’s music. Or how many fans of the recent album will show up to watch the movie. Current projections aren’t particularly high, but again there’s not much to compare to.

There are two other small films that are listed by the-numbers.com as a having a wide release. But my explorations make me think they’re more on the limited front, or just a few hundred theaters. First is the Korean drama Next Sohee, which was actually released at the Cannes Film Festival back in 2022 and had an international release spread across 2023. So the timing of this U.S. release is a bit interesting. The movie is about a high school student working at a call center who decides to end her life after five months of working there, as well as an investigation from a detective after the fact who sets out to learn what led to that.

The other small release is the horror film The Ruse, which is about an in-home caregiver who starts to fear for her life after being assigned to a mysterious elderly patient’s home in a remote seaside location. This comes from Stevan Mena, who directed the 2003 horror film “Malevolence” as well as the 2010 horror film “Bereavement.” Currently this movie has a very small imprint, produced by Mena Films and distributed by Seismic Releasing, neither of which have much experience in wide distribution. The trailer has less than 200,000 views and I can’t even find a Wikipedia article for the movie. But it’s IMDb page reveals that it was released at the Maine International Film Festival last year and those who saw it there seemed to have enjoyed it, so perhaps it’s a small movie worth seeking out at some point if you’re a horror fan.

May 23 – 26

Disney's "Lilo & Stitch" and Paramount's "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning"

And here we are. The four-day Memorial Day weekend, which is a weekend that has potential to have absolutely huge turnout with a cinematic battle of Mission: Impossible vs. Disney. Acknowledging that Disney very well could be the easy winner here, I’m nevertheless going to start with Mission: Impossible, with their eighth entry, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. Is this actually going to be the final movie in this franchise? Well, as a friend of mine always says, never believe Hollywood when they say something is the final chapter, especially not here when Tom Cruise has recently said that he wants to continue making this movies until he’s in his 80s. Paramount might want Tom Cruise to hush up, at least for now, because they’re definitely pushing this movie as the final one, not only re-titling the movie as “The Final Reckoning,” but also using the line in the trailer, “I need you trust me… one last time” in just about every marketing push. Perhaps the goal here is to make this feel more like an event film that you have to see in theaters, making up for their potential flubs with the recent movie, initially titled “Dead Reckoning Part 1,” which made it feel like the first half of a movie that can be skipped until Part 2 comes out. It also didn’t help that the timing of the release was the weekend before “Barbenheimer.” It opened to a 3-Day total of $54.7 million, finishing with $172.6 million domestically.

Can “The Final Reckoning” reverse course and score the franchise’s biggest opening? True or not, the urgency of being advertised as the final chapter often causes people to show up. Plus the Memorial Day weekend release, combined with less competition than “Dead Reckoning” had does give this potential. The current highest opening weekend of the franchise is “Fallout” in 2018 with $61.2 million. Given the franchise started in 1996, if you again press the inflation-adjusted button on the-numbers.com, the actual winner is “Mission: Impossible 2” with $121.4 million. “The Final Reckoning” is definitely not getting that high, but on this particular scale, the third, fifth, and sixth movies have a consistent range of $74-82 million. The fourth movie, “Ghost Protocol,” opened in December, so it’s not the best comparison. Box Office Pro is currently giving the movie a range of $65-80 million for the 3-Day and $75-100 million for the 4-Day. A range that wide feels like they’re cheating a bit, but if it hits the upper half of their 3-Day range, that would lineup with these previous entries in regards to attendance. If the movie can manage to hit $100 million on the 4-Day weekend, Paramount would definitely be celebrating quite a bit.

But even if it does open on the higher end of projections, would that be enough to top Disney’s Lilo & Stitch, the latest in their string of seemingly non-stop live-action remakes? Early indications say no. YouTuber Dan Murrell, whose specific niche is breaking down box office numbers, has predicted “Lilo & Stitch” as his top grossing movie of the summer. Aligning with that, Box Office Pro just released their long range forecast on the movie, pegging it at a $120-140 million 3-Day opening and a $135-165 million 4-Day opening. I just about fell on the floor when I saw that prediction. That would certainly be a huge win for Disney after suffering a massive loss with their extremely troubled remake of “Snow White” back in March, which couldn’t even get to $100 million domestically following a massively inflated budget of nearly $300 million, and that’s not even counting advertising and marketing. Some might say the reaction to that failure would be for them to stop with the remakes, claiming that people no longer care or want them. However, Disney’s approach might instead be to focus more on the correct remakes that audiences actually do want. Rather than going back to the 1930’s and 40s, 2002 might be a big winner. Remakes of the Renaissance movies were very successful, financially speaking. And although they’ve gone through almost all of those, except for maybe “Hercules” and “Hunchback,” which have been rumored to be in production for a while now, the 2000s movies seem like the next best thing to mine. And although Disney had a lot of failures in the early 2000s, “Lilo & Stitch” in 2002 was one of their bigger success stories. And with the live-action “Moana” scheduled for next year, if that’s also a huge success, the 2010s might be a target, too. I can almost guarantee “Frozen” heading into production if “Moana” works out.

I did mention the official prediction from Box Office Pro. If I were doing my own personal analysis of this, I’d take a look at “Aladdin” and “The Little Mermaid,” two live-action Disney remakes recently that also opened over Memorial Day weekend. “Aladdin” in 2019 opened to $91.5 million, while “The Little Mermaid” in 2023 opened to $95.6 million, both of those being 3-Day openings. The 4-Day openings were $116.8 million and $118.8 million, respectively. That would seem like the upper echelon to me, as there’s plenty of other examples of these Disney remakes opening in the $50-75 million range. But maybe we are in for a huge surprise. It’s at least definitely not going to be No. 1. That would go to “The Lion King” in 2019 opening to $191.7 million, followed by “Beauty and the Beast” in 2017 with $174.8 million. Current third place is “Alice in Wonderland” at $116.1 million, then “The Jungle Book” at $103.3 million.

While these two movies are the huge heavy hitters that could potentially push the weekend itself above $200 million, they aren’t the only two new releases. Hanging out far below those two will be the latest from Angel Studios, The Last Rodeo. This stars Neal McDonough as a retired rodeo star who enters a high-stakes bull-riding competition in order to save his grandson. Angel Studios did have a huge hit last month in “The King of Kings,” which opened to $19.4 million, and as of me typing this, has so far earned $56.4 million domestically, good enough for second place all-time for Angel Studios, behind “The Sound of Freedom.” But prior to that, Angel Studios was on a role with consistently opening movies in the $3-5 million range. Their third highest grossing movie is “Homestead” from December 2024, which also starred Neal McDonough, and opened to just above $6 million, finishing with $20.8 million total.

And finally, A24 will be expanding their movie Friendship this weekend into wide release. This movie is actually scheduled for limited release on May 9 and will play the game of rolling out slowly instead of jumping straight into wide release. Whether this is an expansion into 1,000+ theaters, or simply 500-800 theaters, I do not know. That’ll probably depend on how well the movie is received and performs in wide release. It has been a bit of a buzzy film, opening last year at the Toronto International Film Festival, and is a comedy starring Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd as two neighbors that develop a friendship that threatens to ruin both of their lives. Currently the movie sits at 91 percent from 45 reviews counted, so early critics who have seen it have liked it quite a bit, but we’ll see how that translates into success with general audiences.

May 30 – June 1

Sony's "Karate Kid: Legends"

The final weekend of May sees Hollywood mainly choosing to recover from the Memorial Day weekend as “Mission: Impossible” and “Lilo & Stitch” are both set to continue to do quite well. But we do get one additional wild card thrown into the mix with Karate Kid: Legends debuting. This will be the sixth Karate Kid movie that will be released to theaters, following the initial four in the 80s and 90s, as well as the 2010 remake with Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith. And now “Karate Kid: Legends” combines those two worlds as Jackie Chan and Ralph Macchio team up to train a new Karate Kid. Helping the franchise remain relevant since 2010 has been the Netlfix series “Cobra Kai,” which just finished its sixth and final season this February. “Cobra Kai” managed to bring back most of the characters from the first three Karate Kid movies, as well as introducing plenty of new ones. How many of the “Cobra Kai” characters outside Macchio will show up in this new movie is yet to be revealed, as this is not done by the same people. But again, it’s helped the franchise stay relevant. And if fans of the old movies, the 2010 remake, and “Cobra Kai” all show up, this has potential to be a decent hit. For comparison, the 2010 movie opened to $55.7 million in June 2010, and finished with $176.6 million domestically. If you adjust for inflation, that opening jumps up to $79.8 million. If “Karate Kid: Legends” does manage to hit in the $50-70 million range, that could be an entry for surprise movie of the summer. Box Office Pro has not yet released their long range forecast for this, so there’s nothing to compare to in that, but I’ll definitely be curious to see what they think. It’s also possible that audiences take this weekend off after a busy holiday, which could hurt this.

We will be finishing this post with the final horror film of the month, the supernatural horror film Bring Her Back, which follows a brother and sister uncovering a terrifying ritual at the secluded home of their new foster mother, played by Sally Hawkins. This movie comes from the directing duo of Danny and Michael Philippou, who previously directed the 2023 movie “Talk to Me.” Prior to that, the brothers ran the YouTube channel RackaRacka, so these guys are an example of YouTubers turned filmmakers who are now hoping that their second movie is as successful as the first one. “Talk to Me” opened to $10.4 million and held pretty well for a horror film, finishing with $48.3 million domestically and $91.9 million worldwide, which is not bad at all for a movie with a budget of $4.5 million. I’m not sure what the budget is on this new one, but I’m sure A24 is happy to have them back. If there’s enough good will from “Talk to Me,” I could see that translating into a successful run for “Bring Her Back.”

Movie Preview: April 2025

It’s been almost a historically bad start to the year so far at the domestic box office. And while one can often forgive January and February for being lackluster, March completely bottomed out making just $397.6 million. Not counting the COVID years of 2020 and 2021, that’s the lowest grossing March since 1995. And that’s not adjusted for ticket price inflation. For comparison, even the last two years were in the $600-700 million range. Pre-COVID, most Marches were in the $800-900 million range, with 2017, led by “Beauty and the Beast,” earning $1.171 billion. So yeah, not cracking $400 million on the month is really bad. And that sparks an interesting discussion regarding what went wrong and how can things manage to recover. Is it doom and gloom? Are theaters finally over and movies done? Is streaming finally going to take over as the main source of movie watching? Or is it simply a case of audiences not liking what the studios put out? Meaning people are willing to come out and pay for a ticket, they’re just waiting for the right movie.

While this could’ve been a more nuanced discussion had I typed and released this post a week ago, the conversation has immediately shifted with the massive breakout that was “A Minecraft Movie” in the first weekend. And now we get the opportunity to analyze that in the context of everything. The short answer seems to be that the latter option is correct. While times are certainly changing and it seems unlikely that we’ll ever get back to where we were pre-COVID, people are still willing to come out to theaters. They’re just waiting for the right movie. And right now, “Minecraft” is that movie. But is there anything else? Normally April is the calm before the storm, given that the summer movie season begins in May and studios usually wait until then to release their biggest movies. But April does have a decent bit of potential and certainly plenty in terms of quantity, so that gives us plenty to talk about here as we explore “Minecraft” and what’s going up against it in the ensuing weeks.

As always, release date information for this post is courtesy of the-numbers.com and boxofficepro.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 4 – 6

Warner Bros.' "A Minecraft Movie"

Yes, if you didn’t get the news, this month started out with an absolutely bang as A Minecraft Movie opened to a staggering $162.8 million. I don’t need to tell you what this is. I might be the least qualified person to do so, in fact, as one who’s not played a single minute of the video game. I can make mention that the first full version of the game was released back in 2011 and a quick Google search claims that there are currently over 200 million monthly active players. And the nature of the game is such that it has a much larger shelf life than your average video game. Is it the type of movie that translates well into a movie? Well, that can be debatable. Clearly the final product wound up working well for its target audience, both in terms of attracting people to come see it and resulting in them enjoying it. It’s also a movie that’s been in development not longer after the game itself was released. The game’s creator announced as early as 2014 that a movie adaptation from Warner Bros. was in the works. In the decade since, there’s been a very long list of directors and actors that have been attached to the movie before landing on Jared Hess in 2022, and eventually landing Jack Black and Jason Momoa as main leads of the movie. Prognostications for this movie were all over the place leading up to its release. $50-80 million seemed like the common range, with the later predictions leaning towards $80-100 million as we got closer to the weekend. I personally would’ve looked at the “Sonic” franchise, with the first and third opening around $60 million, while “Sonic 2” opened to $72.1 million. We also had “Detective Pikachu” open to $54.4 million and “Five Nights at Freddy’s” open to $80 million.

As it turns out, “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” was the correct comparison, as two years ago on this first weekend of April, it opened to $146.4 million, which broke the record for the highest opening for a video game movie, a record that is now held by “A Minecraft Movie,” although it should be noted that “Mario” opened on a Wednesday and had a 5-day opening of $204.6 million, which thus deflated its official 3-day total. The record books won’t make note of that, but it certainly will be worth following to see if “Minecraft” can top the $574.9 million domestic total of “Mario” or its $1.359 billion worldwide total. “Minecraft” had an official worldwide start of $313 million, so that’s where the race begins. And in terms of direct competition for family audiences, there’s not a single major competitor until “Lilo & Stitch” at the end of May, so “Minecraft” has a very long runway. What does this mean in terms of the state of cinema? Well, it certainly seems to prove the point that people still are willing to head out to the theaters. They’re just simply waiting for the right movie to see. And right now that’s “Minecraft.” In fact, with the likes of “Mario,” “Sonic,” and “Minecraft” all doing well, we do seem to be in a golden age for video game movie adaptations, with the common denominator being video game movies targeted at a family audience. That bodes well for the likes of “The Legend of Zelda,” currently scheduled for 2027, as well as the imminent sequels that these movies mentioned will get. Hollywood still hasn’t quite cracked the code for more adult-targeted video game movies, but they’ll continue to try. Although maybe more lessons should be learned from the TV realm, as “The Last of Us” and “Fallout” have proven that perhaps a series is a better format for a video game adaptation instead of trying to stuff a giant game into a two hour movie.

“Minecraft” wasn’t the only thing to hit theaters this weekend. But speaking of TV shows, the second best new release came with The Chosen: Last Supper – Part 2. As a reminder, this is Season 5 of “The Chosen,” which is being released theatrically by Fathom Events in three parts, just like with Season 4 last year. Part 1 of Season 5, which was Episodes 1 and 2, actually had the biggest weekend yet for any theatrical event for “The Chosen,” as it opened to $11.8 million. For whatever reason, a certain percentage of people did not return for Part 2, which is Episodes 3, 4, and 5, but it still had a solid opening of $6.9 million. Currently Part 1, at the end of its second weekend, has totaled $17.9 million, which means that in total Season 5 is up in the realm of $25 million total, with Part 3 still to come in the second weekend of April, while all three parts will remain in theaters concurrently. So this has been a very productive theatrical run for Season 5, which is focusing on the final week of the life of Jesus Christ, up until the final day, which will be portrayed in Season 6.

In moderate wide release, NEON released Hell of a Summer, a slasher flick written and directed by “Stranger Things” star Finn Wolfhard and co-directed by Billy Bryk. Finn and Billy also co-star in the movie itself, which is about a group of counselors of a summer camp being terrorized by a masked killer, so a movie clearly inspired by the “Friday the 13th” franchise. The movie was actually initially released at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2023, so it’s taken nearly two years for it to finally be available to mainstream audiences. It opened in 8th place with $1.75 million from 1,255 theaters. Reviews have been mixed to negative, although some have enjoyed it as an entertainingly silly throwback that might amuse any horror fans for 90 minutes.

Coming in right behind “Hell of Summer” was the nationwide expansion of The Friend. This is a movie that opened the prior weekend in just two theaters, earning $67,629, which made for a solid per theater average of $33,815. In its second weekend in expanded to 1,237 theaters and earned $1.65 million, a much smaller per theater average, which means it didn’t quite connect with general audiences in the same way that it connected with people during its platform release. Nevertheless, the movie stars Bill Murray and Naomi Watts, as well as Bing the dog playing the Great Dane Apollo. The movie has Watts playing a creative writing teacher whose life is thrown into disarray when her friend and mentor commits suicide and she’s left to take care of his dog. This is movie that also opened in the festival rounds, starting in Telluride before hitting Toronto and New York, although doing so last year as opposed to 2023. It’s reaction so far has been mixed to positive, although it landing with Bleecker Street and getting released in April instead of getting an awards run suggests its not good enough to be an awards player, but it’s there as an option for any adult audience who wants to see a drama about a girl and a dog.

April 11 – 13

A24's "Warfare"

In the ensuing weeks with “Minecraft,” we will now play this game of how well can it hold in comparison to “Mario” and is there anything in the market that can come remotely close to toppling it. “Thunderbolts*” will take the top spot in the first weekend of May, but is there any movie that can possibly beat it before then? Or is it going to completely sweep April?

With the second weekend, “Mario” fell 37 percent for a weekend total of $92.3 million. If “Minecraft” fell that same exact percentage in its second weekend, that would lead to a second weekend total of $102.5 million. Can it really manage to pull off a $100 million second weekend? There’s not a whole lot of movies that have been able to pull that off. Seven to be exact, three of them being Avengers movies (“Age of Ultron” being the odd man out), “Black Panther,” “Jurassic World,” “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” and last year’s “Inside Out 2.” In regards to the latter, it opened to $154.2 million, then fell 34 percent in weekend 2, to finish with $101.2 million. Fellow Warner Bros. movie “Barbie” opened with a nearly identical $162.02 million (vs. the $162.75 million for “Minecraft”). “Barbie” fell 43 percent in Weekend 2 for a $93.01 million total. Needless to say, somewhere in the 35-45 percent range seems like an appropriate drop for “Minecraft,” putting it in the range of $89.5-105.8 million.

And no, there’s nothing that will open remotely close to that range, but there are four new releases, as well as Part 3 of “The Chosen” Season 5, that will all be jockeying for position in the top five. I could see a variety of potential outcomes, but it seems like the safest bet to earn the silver medal is A24’s Warfare, which is another military related from director Alex Garland, who helmed last year’s “Civil War,” which opened to $25.5 million. “Warfare” is a movie about a team of Navy SEALs during the Iraq War towards the end of 2006, who are on a mission during the final stages of the Battle of Ramadi. The movie is co-directed by Ray Mendoza, who was Garland’s military supervisor on “Civil War,” and is based on Mendoza’s own personal experiences during the Iraq War. In fact, lead actor D’Pharoah Woon-A-Tai is cast to play Mendoza himself in the movie, meaning Garland might be more of a supporting role as a director, while it’s Mendoza telling his own story. The movie is currently being praised for its high level of authenticity to what it was like to be in war, which seems to be the main goal. Box Office Pro has this pegged to open in the $12-18 million range, but I’m thinking that this feels like it could open closer to “Civil War” and positive early reviews indicate that this could generate positive word of mouth that’ll help it have a good run. Every once in a while a positively reviewed war movie breaks out in a surprising way, like “Lone Survivor” opening to $37.8 million in January 2014 or Clint Eastwood’s “Lone Survivor” exploding onto the scene a year later with an opening of $89.3 million. I won’t predict “Warfare” to come remotely close to that, but that just shows the potential of this genre when it hits. Will Poulter and Joseph Quinn are among the cast of supporting actors in the film.

It feels like even more of a toss-up to figure out what’s next, but going off of early reviews, I will take a shot on bringing up the thriller Drop next, which is described by the Critics Consensus on Rotten Tomatoes as a “Hitchcockian thriller that cleverly utilizes modern technology for its twists and turns.” It seems a bit funny to already have a Critics Consensus when there’s only been 39 reviews counted, but those early reviews have so far been very positive as it stands at a 90 percent. This comes via Christopher Landon, director of “Happy Death Day” and “Freaky,” as well as being a writer and producer for “Heart Eyes” from earlier this year. The basic premise is that a girl goes on a date with a man, and suddenly starts getting mysterious messages telling her to kill her date or the sender of the messages is going to hurt her son. And that’s all I personally want to know about the premise, so I won’t even attempt to dive further. Box Office Pro has this pegged in the $10-15 million range, which doesn’t really help in trying to figure out an order. On the positive end, “Happy Death Day” opened to $26 million, but that was in the middle of Halloween season in October 2017. The sequel opened to a much smaller $9.5 million, while “Heart Eyes” earlier this year opened to $8.3 million and “Freaky” to just $3.6 million, although the latter feels like more of an anomaly given its November 2020 release during COVID. But that still provides a wide range here, which will likely depend on audience awareness combined with word of mouth.

Next up is the action/spy thriller The Amateur, which stars Rami Malek as a CIA cryptographer who loses his wife in a terrorist attack and embarks on a solo vigilante mission to hunt down her killers, after realizing his bosses aren’t going to do anything, then blackmailing them to train him as a field operative. The movie is based on the 1981 novel of the same name by Robert Littell, and is directed by James Hawes, who directed a random assortment of TV episodes as well as the feature length film “One Life,” starring Anthony Hopkins, from last year. In seeing the trailers over the past few months, this has always felt like a movie that could either be a breakout hit or be completely ignored, and I’m not even sure which one it’ll be, especially on a crowded weekend with a lot of different options. Although it does give me vibes of “Novocaine” or “Black Bag” from this past month, the latter being a fellow spy thriller, with the former being a dude trying to hunt down people who did things to his love interest. The two movies opened on the same weekend, which saw “Novocaine” win out with $8.8 million, with “Black Bag” not too far behind with $7.6 million. Box Office Pro also isn’t super helpful as they also have this pegged in the $10-15 million range, which I guess they’re just going to put everything there.

The last wide movie release is of the animated variety and that is Angel Studios’ The King of Kings, which is the second movie this year to tell the story of Jesus. And I’m not counting “The Chosen” in that. Last month, Pinnacle Peak released the movie “The Last Supper,” which was a co-production by Pure Flix and Grand Canyon University and focused exactly on what it says in the title, with emphasis being on Peter and Judas, and their contrasting feelings during that final week. “The King of Kings” does set itself apart by being animated and thus more family oriented. But it’s also framed by being loosely based on Charles Dickens’ “The Life of Our Lord” and has Dickens telling the story of Jesus to his son Walter. In that story, if you had Oscar Isaac voicing Jesus on your 2025 Bingo Card, congratulations! You win! The movie also features voices of Kenneth Branagh, Uma Thurman, Mark Hamill, Pierce Brosnan, Roman Griffin Davis, Forest Whitaker, Ben Kingsley, Dee Bradley Backer, James Arnold Taylor, and Jim Cummings. That’s quite the voice cast for a Christian movie about Jesus. Now a lot of Angel Studios movies have been consistently opening in the $3-5 million. Given the subject matter and the Easter Season, this does feel like one that could jump a bit higher. Deadline just yesterday reported that the presales for “The King of Kings” are outselling “Sound of Freedom” at their same point in release. And “Sound of Freedom” wound up opening to $19.7 million. I’m not sure that necessarily translates into a $20 million opening for “The King of Kings,” but it just shows that it’s yet another movie from this weekend with breakout potential.

And, of course, we also have The Chosen: Last Supper – Part 3. I have talked about “The Chosen” plenty already, but as a reminder, this is Season 5 of “The Chosen.” Part 3 is the final three episodes of the season. Part 1 opened to $11.8 million, while Part 2 opened to $6.9 million. It would be a little weird if Part 3 opened higher than Part 2, because that would assume some people skipped the middle three episodes and went straight to the finale. But I suppose its possible that some will catch up on Part 2 during the week before seeing Part 3. Or maybe catch them back to back. If it follows the trends of Season 4, though, Part 1 opened the biggest, Part 2 opened to about half as much, while Part 3 opened slightly below Part 2. So I expect a similar pattern here, with Part 3 opening somewhere in the $6 million range. Season 5 will debut on streaming at some point later in the year, although I’m not sure the specific date has been announced just yet. It took a bit for Season 4 to finally get to streaming as their appeared to be a bit of a battle as to which service got the rights.

April 18 – 20

Warner Bros.' "Sinners"

After what looks like a busy second weekend, the third weekend looks to be a bit quieter. There’s just one major release, but also a handful of smaller ones. Before that, though, continuing our “Minecraft” vs. “Mario” game, “Mario” in its third weekend fell 35 percent and earned a total of $59.9 million. If “Minecraft” followed “Mario” exactly in Weekend 2, and again in Weekend 3, that would equate to a devil’s number of $66.6 million on Easter weekend. If it instead fell on the higher end of the predicted range (45 percent drop), and then again in Weekend 3, that would mean a total of $49.2 million. So we’re likely looking at somewhere in the range of $50-65 million.

And no, nothing on the schedule that looks to come particularly close to that. So it seems safe to say that “Minecraft” gets a three-peat at the box office, at the very least. However the one big opening of this weekend a fellow Warner Bros. release with Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, which re-teams Coogler with yet again with Michael B. Jordan, who starred in “Fruitvale Station,” “Creed” and “Black Panther,” all of which were directed by Coogler. This time around Coogler heads into the horror realm with Michael B. Jordan playing a duel role as two brothers who return to their home town, which is set in the 1930s, only to find what the trailers infer is a vampire problem. Some have even said it looks like the type of movie that could’ve happened if Michael B. Jordan had been cast in the lead of Marvel’s “Blade,” which seems at this point that it might not actually happen. Back to “Sinners” Box Office Pro currently has it in the $35-45 million range. They had it even higher in their initial Long Range Forecast, with $40-50 million. To me that seems a bit generous, but would put in the range of “Alien: Romulus” ($42.0 million) or “A Quiet Place: Day One” ($52.2 million). However, those were both franchise films. Glancing through horror openings of last year, there are a lot that hit the $8-12 million range. Given the name recognition of Coogler and Jordan, I would believe that this could be higher. But I personally see openings like “Nosferatu” ($21.7 million), “Longlegs” ($22.4 million), and “Smile 2” ($23.0 million). But who knows. We very well could have a breakout hit on the level of a Jordan Peele horror movie. Both “Get Out” and “Nope” would fit the range of Box Office Pro’s $35-45 million.

Looking at the rest of the calendar for this weekend, there are three additional releases that the-numbers claims are opening in wide release, although in my personal investigation it doesn’t seem like any of them are opening too terribly wide. The most likely for moderate success is The Wedding Banquet, which is a movie out of Sundance this year that’s about a gay man who makes a deal with his lesbian friend: a green-card marriage for him in exchange for in vitro fertilization for her. Things don’t quite go as planned and start spiraling a bit out of control. That’s a premise that’s likely to grab the attention of some people and has a 97 percent score out of Sundance, with 30 reviews counted. It comes from Bleecker Street, who expanded “The Friend” earlier this month into 1,237 theaters, earning $1.65 milion.

Smaller movie No. 2 is the animated movie Sneaks, from Briarcliff Entertainment. It does have a solid voice cast, with Anthony Mackie, Keith David, Laurence Fishburne, and Martin Lawrence. The movie is about a sneaker who gets lost in New York City. IMDb gets rather punny when they describe this sneaker as having to dig deep into his “sole” to rescue his sister and return to his rightful owner. The highest grossing release from Briarcliff Entertainment is the 2022 movie “Blacklight,” which opened to $3.5 million. This year they released “My Dead Friend Zoe” in 780 theaters, earning $740,088 in its opening weekend, as well as “Magazine Dreams” in 815 theaters, which opened to $701,365. So I’m guessing those two are closer to what “Sneaks” will perform like.

And finally GKIDS will be releasing COLORFUL STAGE! The Movie: A Miku Who Can’t Sing into domestic theaters, following its Japanese release in January. On a quick glance, this may look like another TV series adaptation, or collection of episodes, like GKIDS has helped distribute quite a bit lately, but this is in fact an adaptation of a mobile game called “Hatsune Miku: Colorful Stage!,” which itself is a spin-off of the video game series “Hatsune Miku: Project Diva,” which is a series with six main titles and four spin-off titles. Anyways, in coming back from that rabbit hole, this movie adaptation is described as a sci-fi musical drama with a bit of a layered premise that fans of these games might appreciate. The most recent GKIDS release here domestically was “Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX -Beginning-,” which opened in 784 theaters and made $882.471. Some of these GKIDS anime movies surprise, but those are usually from franchises that are more well known and popular. I suppose this is the wrong month to underestimate a video game adaptation, but initially this doesn’t seem like the type of anime that will connect in the same way domestically.

April 25 – 27

Amazon MGM's "The Accountant 2"

In our final game of “Minecraft” vs. “Mario,” if “Minecraft” again follows the same trajectory of “Mario,” in its fourth weekend “Mario” dropped just 32 percent for a total of $40.8 million. That same percentage drop would leave “Minecraft” with $45.3 million. On the lower end of things, if it continued a slightly steeper drop of 45 percent again in weekend 4, that would lead it to a fourth weekend total of $27.1 million. That means a likely weekend range of $30-45 million. The other comparison that I mentioned earlier was “Barbie,” which again had a nearly identical opening to “Minecraft.” In Weekend 4, “Barbie” made a total of $33.8 million. I’m not going to try to predict exactly where “Minecraft” will land on the spectrum, but there’s your range for the final weekend of April.

And that’s where things get interesting for the first time as our big new release is The Accountant 2, which is another movie that’s been getting solid early buzz. Box Office Pro has the movie projected at the moment in the $30-40 million range, right where I’m putting the range for “Minecraft.” So if “The Accountant 2” does indeed hit this range, this could be the first real challenge for “Minecraft.” Now the original movie “The Accountant” was a 2016 action movie starring Ben Afflect as an autistic public accountant who works in the realm of criminal and terrorist organizations, which leads into it being an action film when two hitmen get sent to kill him. The movie opened decently to $24.7 million, that being in October 2016. It finished with $86.3 million domestically and $152.9 million worldwide, off a production budget of $40 million. The movie got mixed reviews from critics, currently holding a 53 percent score, but has had a decent post-theatrical life as it’s been very well regarded in certain circles, which has finally led it to getting a sequel… nine years later. “The Accountant 2” has director Gavin O’Connor returning for the sequel, as well as much of the original cast, including Ben Affleck, Jon Bernthal, and J.K. Simmons, so this will be a real test to see how popular “The Accountant” has actually become in the last nine years. I could see it falling a little short, opening in the $15-20 million, as belated sequels don’t always work out. This could be a case of a sequel coming out about six years too late. Or if it really has built up a huge audience, perhaps it does earn $30-40 million and win the weekend.

Speaking of video game adaptations coming out this month, “Minecraft” isn’t the only one coming out as this weekend sees the much clamored for movie adaptation of Until Dawn, which is a choose your own adventure horror game that was released for the Playstation 4 in 2015. It’s about a group of friends who go to a cabin in the woods and the choices you make in the game determine what the final outcome ends up being, meaning that there are a lot of potential timelines that can play out, with a variety of different endings. Can you keep everyone alive or are your choices going to kill everyone off? Given the basic cabin in the woods premise, this is a game that definitely lends itself to a horror movie, although you obviously lose the interaction that you have in the game. With horror director David F. Sandberg attached to the movie (“Lights Out,” “Annabelle: Creation”), on paper this seemed like it could work well. Then the trailer came out and fans of the game became extremely worried that the only thing the movie has in common with the game is… the title of the movie, which has led to a lot of confusion as to certain directions the movie seems to be going. And, oddly enough, the video game is the one that has a more recognizable voice cast, as Rami Malek is one of the main voices in the game, as is Hayden Penettiere. Yet the movie adaptation has a mostly unrecognizable cast of actors. Again, not the month to be doubting video game movie adaptations, but the area that this genre has struggled the most is in adaptations targeted at adults, which is where “Until Dawn” falls. A late April release of a horror adaptation that fans are upset with seems like a recipe for disaster. Something that might open in the single digit millions, but $8-12 million is the range that Box Office Pro has for it.

The final movie of the weekend and the month is the family adventure film The Legend of Ochi, which is a movie that premiered at Sundance this year to moderately positive reaction. This was purchased by A24 and was initially scheduled to come out in February, but was delayed to April after director Isaiah Saxon lost his home in the January wildfires in California. The movie follows a secluded village who teach their children to avoid and fear the reclusive creatures known as the ochi. One young girl, though, finds a baby ochi and develops a bond with it and sets out on a journey to return it to its family. And thus we have a modern family adventure film in the realm of “E.T.,” that some of claimed feels a little too familiar and perhaps a bit generic, but family audiences who do give it a chance have the potential to enjoy it as a fun, heartwarming adventure. Awareness of the movie doesn’t seem to be too incredibly high at the moment, but perhaps it’s the type of movie that gets found later in the streaming realm and is enjoyed that way.