Movie Preview: September 2024

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

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

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

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.

Movie Preview: August 2024

 

After a rocky start to the summer in May where some people made it seem like the world was ending and cinema was dead, a strong June was followed by a very strong July that proved yet again, with a series of hits, that people will in fact still go to the movies if it’s a movie they are excited for. And they were very excited for “Deadpool & Wolverine,” which shattered records for an R-rated opening, making $211.4 million, beating the previous record by nearly $80 million. It wound up being the sixth highest opening ever at the domestic box office for any movie and the fourth highest opening in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. But “Deadpool & Wolverine” wasn’t the only success story. Both “Despicable Me 4” and “Twisters” also lived up to and exceeded expectations, leading the overall July box office to cross $1.1 billion, the first month of the year to hit the $1 billion mark.

Now even in the best of years, the August box office is always the cool down month of the summer. Every once in a while there’s a “Guardians of the Galaxy” or a “Suicide Squad” that gets released and dominates, but for the most part studios save their biggest blockbusters for the other three summer months, as August sees the summer wind down and school starting up again, leading to the slower fall movie season before the holiday season kicks things back into gear. So expectations aren’t exactly super high, so no worries if there’s not a massive hit. Looking at a glance, there are a few titles that could hit, but I don’t think it’s going to be anything like what we just saw in the last two months. Thus that leaves “Deadpool & Wolverine” to dominate the month as it only had six days in theaters during July. And thus we will be playing the game here of what movie can manage to dethrone “Deadpool & Wolverine” as we dive deeper into the August releases, so let’s get started.

This is where I usually say that release date information for this post is courtesy of boxofficepro.com and the-numbers.com. And while that’s still true, I had to cross reference things with a few other sites to attempt to have the most accurate information. Box Office Pro has been very inconsistent and sparse with their long range forecasts, while the-numbers.com has had a rough time loading the last few days and weeks. So I had to double check some things with my old friend Box Office Mojo. Metacritic also provided some useful help. Generally speaking, I have a good idea of the major wide releases, but it’s some of the small to medium sized films that provided a bit more ambiguity as to how big their releases are going to be. So the general idea is to list the movies that are currently scheduled for a wide release in the United States and Canada, which is always subject to change, but I’ll note the ones that I’m uncertain about as to whether it’s a wide release or a more limited on.

August 2 – 4

Warner Bros.' "Trap"

Before we jump into the new wide releases for this weekend, I did a bit of number crunching with “Deadpool & Wolverine” to try to have an idea of how well it will do each week this month, to see what the bar is for a movie to dethrone it. Due to it being the first R-rated movie to open above $200 million, it’s pioneering its own path, making specifics hard to predict, but I did compare it to a handful of movies that opened in a similar range to see what the possible paths could be. For this weekend, the worst case scenario would be a second weekend around $70 million, with the best case scenario being around $115 million. The correct answer is probably somewhere in between. In Box Office Pro’s weekend forecast, they pegged it at a range of $80-100 million. The first Deadpool movie fell 57 percent in weekend 2. If “Deadpool & Wolverine” has a similar fall, that would lead to a $90.9 million second weekend.

With that as the bar, there is most certainly not going to be an upset this weekend as the biggest competition is Shyamalan’s new mystery/thriller Trap. Shyamalan’s biggest ever opening is “Signs” in 2002 with $60.1 million. More recently, “Knock at the Cabin” opened to $14.1 million last year, while “Old” opened to $16.9 million in 2021. If “Trap” opens in that realm, that means it will be in a fight for second place with the third weekend of “Twisters,” which put up $34.9 million last weekend after its $81.3 million opening. That should see it on track for $15-20 million. That means “Trap” needs to hit on the higher end of expectations to earn second place. And it very well could do that as this is a more unique setting for a Shyamalan thriller, specifically a concert setting. A serial killer dubbed “The Butcher,” played by Josh Hartnett, is taking his daughter to a concert of her favorite pop star Lady Raven, played by Shyamalan’s daughter Saleka. Turns out the concert is a big trap with a massive police presence, who are there to try to stop him. So the attempt here is a serial killer crime thriller from Shyamalan, a thing he has done a time or two. Given the hit or miss nature of a lot of Shyamalan movies, reaction to this might be key to the movie’s success. 

On a completely different level than “Deadpool & Wolverine,” “Trap,” or “Twisters” is the latest PG-rated family film, Harold and the Purple Crayon. This theoretically could lead to some solid counter-programming if parents are ready for another trip to the theaters with the kids. Or maybe they already spent their summer movie budget on “Inside Out 2” and/or “Despicable Me 4.” Either way, this is based on the 1955 children’s book about a 4-year-old boy and his magic purple crayon, which gives him the power to create a world of his own simply by drawing it. This became a series of books that is currently 10 books large and has been adapted a few different times via an animated short in 1959, a few other smaller animated movies, a 2001 TV series that ran for 13 episodes, and an upcoming Broadway musical that was announced in 2022. Production on this current film adaptation has been in the works for quite some time, initially slated as an animated film before ending up in its current form as a live-action/animated hybrid, with Zachary Levi playing an adult version of Harold. I don’t know exactly how high the interest in this one is, but it will at least be an option for families.

It appears that “Trap” and “Harold and the Purple Crayon” are the only two major wide releases this weekend, but there also might be a movie called The Firing Squad in some theaters near you. The different sites I looked at couldn’t quite agree on whether this was a wide release or a limited release. So looking at my local showtimes suggested that this is probably a more moderate release in a few hundred theaters rather than a super wide release. But regardless of exactly how many theaters, this is indeed a real movie getting released in some places. And it’s a Christian film starring Kevin Sorbo and Cuba Gooding Jr. and is about three prisoners facing execution who find Christ while in prison and undergo a change of heart. It is inspired by the story of Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, two drug traffickers who were convicted and imprisoned in Indonesia, but were converted to Christianity before being executed by a firing squad in 2015.

August 9 – 11

Lionsgate’s "Borderlands"

Reporting in on the third weekend of “Deadpool & Wolverine,” based on the different models I created, it seems likely that it will land somewhere in the $40-60 million range. Is that enough for it to three-peat at No. 1 at the box office? Based on the three movies being released this weekend, that seems quite likely.

The first of these three is the live action adaptation of the video game Borderlands. Video game adaptations have generally had a very streaky success rate at the box office, but whether it be a bad or good streak, Hollywood keeps on trying. Recently the luck has actually been a lot more positive with shows like “The Last of Us,” “Fallout,” and “Arcane,” and movies like “Five Nights at Freddy’s,” “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” and “Sonic the Hedgehog.” I wouldn’t quite say we’re at the level of a video game movie revolution, but things have been quite positive. And on the positive note, Eli Roth is on board to direct “Borderlands,” which is described as an action role-playing, first person shooter video game series that has been out since 2009 and has had mostly very positive reactions. The movie adaptation looks quite colorful and vibrant, some making comparisons to a James Gunn style of film, like “Guardians of the Galaxy” or “The Suicide Squad.” And in addition to Eli Roth directing, the movie has a solid cast that includes Cate Blanchett, Kevin Hart, Jack Black, Ariana Greenblatt, Florian Munteanu, and Jamie Lee Curtis. However, despite the positives here, it also must be mentioned that the general online buzz doesn’t seem to be particularly great at the moment, especially as we get closer to release. Perhaps more casual viewers will not be as phased, but fans of the video games don’t seem to be particularly excited, which leaves the movie in a precarious situation, especially sitting here in the middle of August where things are easily forgotten about. A debut around $20-30 million isn’t outside the realm of possibilities, but it seems likely to fall below that.

Perhaps a sleeper pick for the weekend is the romance drama It Ends with Us, which is based on the popular novel of the same name by Colleen Hoover, published in 2016. Hoover said her novel was based on the relationship between her mother and father and is the hardest book she’s ever written. The movie stars Blake Lively as Lily Bloom, who meets a guy named Ryle Kincaid and falls in love. Ryle is played by Justin Baldoni, who also directs the movie. He’s also directed other movies such as “Five Feet Apart” (2019) and “Clouds” (2020). Anyways, things are going great with Lily and Ryle until she notices random outbursts of rage, which reminds her of her father’s poor treatment of her mother. Lily then has to wrestle with whether or not Ryle is different than her father, while also keeping in mind her childhood lover Atlas, who left for the military, but promised to return. It’s while he was gone that she met Ryle. So here we have a classic love triangle in a romantic drama that seems like it has the possibility to connect with audiences. The hesitation might be looking at July’s “Fly Me to the Moon,” which was one of the month’s not so successful stories as that romance film only opened to $9.4 million, despite starring Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum. But if “It Ends with Us” manages to successfully draw out the female crowd while the men are off at “Borderlands,” it could open in the high teens or even flirt with $20 million. And if “Borderlands” is a major disappointment, it could potentially take second place behind “Deadpool & Wolverine.”

Riding the caboose in regards to the three new wide releases is the horror film Cuckoo. This stars Hunter Schafer as a 17-year-old girl who leaves her American home to live with her father, who has moved into a resort in the German Alps. And well, this is a horror movie, so things go crazy and bonkers. The trailer pulls some pull quotes that call the movie “wild, blood-soaked, big-screen fun” and “very bonkers and deliriously entertaining,” which does seem to fall in line with the general consensus from critics. The movie had a festival run earlier this year that included the South by South Film Festival in March and came out of that with decent buzz and an 83 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes through 46 reviews. Whether or not that translates into mainstream success with audiences in the middle of August is a different story. Horror fans can be quite picky and critical with their horror movies. But this does come from NEON, who has developed a decent reputation as of late as a distributor of good low-budget horror films. They just celebrated their biggest opening yet with “Longlegs” at $22.4 million, which has since legged it out to beat “Parasite” for NEON’s highest grossing movie overall. “Cuckoo” won’t get that high, but if it can hit $10 million, that would be a win. That said, there have been a lot of 2024 horror films opening in the $5-8 million range, which wouldn’t be terrible for a low-budget film like this.

August 16 – 18

20th Century Studios' "Alien: Romulus"

In all likelihood, the reign of “Deadpool & Wolverine” will end this weekend with the release of Alien: Romulus. Even if “Deadpool & Wolverine” experiences excellent holds similar to “Black Panther,” that would leave it at a $42 million gross this weekend. More likely is a gross in the $20-30 million range, which “Alien: Romulus” should soar past. This is a franchise that has been around since the original “Alien” in 1979, which was followed up by its equally as beloved predecessor “Aliens” in 1986. And even though it’s been a bumpy road since, the franchise has remained popular and even the “lesser” more critically divided entries in “Prometheus” (2012) and “Alien: Covenant” (2017) still opened to $51.1 million and $36.2 million. Given that this is the first movie in the franchise to open since Disney got the rights after buying Fox, they should be happy to know that the buzz on this one has been quite positive as it feels like a return to form after the franchise has wandered for several decades. “Romulus” specifically takes place in between “Alien” and “Aliens” chronologically and seems to be taking notes from those two movies. While Ridley Scott, director of the original movie and the most recent two, is still on board as producer, Fede Alvarez has taken the torch as director this time and he’s found plenty of success in this horror realm, directing things like “Don’t Breathe” and the 2013 remake of “Evil Dead.” Pegged as the last blockbuster of the summer, this is expected to open in the $45-50 million range.

While “Alien: Romulus” is the big event film this weekend, it’s a bit murky as to what exactly is joining it in wide release, but it feels somewhat safe to start out by talking about penguins with My Penguin Friend, a PG-rated, family-friendly drama about a Brazilian fisherman who discovers an injured penguin and rescues it and brings it home to help it rehabilitate. This is a Brazilian film that is in the English language and is based on the true story of fisherman João Perei de Souza and the penguin Dindim, which went viral in 2016. The movie stars Jean Reno, who played Léon in “Léon: The Professional,” and Adriana Barraza, who got an Oscar nomination for the movie “Babel” in 2006. This is a mid-budgeted movie, so expectations probably aren’t too high, but it should at least be around in theaters near you. And it is a movie that I’ve seen advertised, so that’s at least something.

The last two are even more up in the air, but both the-numbers and Box Office Mojo claim Ryan’s World the Movie: Titan Universe Adventure will be hitting wide release. The movie is being distributed by Falling Forward Films, which did distribute Nicolas Cage’s “The Retirement Plan” in 1,175 theaters last year. The movie is a live-action/animated hybrid film and is based on the Ryan’s World YouTube channel, which is a bit of a new concept. But said YouTube channel, which is directed towards kids, does have 37.4 million subscribers and also has a video from eight years ago titled “HUGE EGGS Surprise Toys Challenge with Inflatable water slide” that has over 2 billion views, so there is an audience here. The movie sees Ryan’s twin sisters get sucked into a mystical comic book, leaving Ryan no choice but to jump in after them, transforming him into an animated superhero in this comic universe, while Ryan’s live-action audience watches his adventures from their devices. How this will all translate into a mainstream audience is good question, but if there are kids who love this YouTube channel and want to convince their parents to take them to the movie, it again should be an option.

And finally we have the crime thriller Skincare, which is being distributed by IFC Films, which usually does smaller, platform releases instead of wide releases. But they did recently release the horror film “Oddity” in 790 theaters last month, as well as the 2022 film “God’s Country” in 785 theaters. So if this is a wide release, it’s likely more of a moderate release in this range, one that you might have to search for if you’re interested. The movie stars Elizabeth Banks as a famed aesthetician Hope Goldman who is about to launch her very own skincare line, but suddenly finds out that rival boutique has opened directly across from her, which sends her on a quest to find out. Both previously mentioned IFC Films that hit moderate release opened to less than $1 million, so that seems like it could be the case here as well. A movie you might find on streaming down the road if it doesn’t expand far enough for you to catch it in theaters.

August 23 – 25

Lionsgate’s "The Crow"

We’re now getting into the weeds of late August where a lot of things are just dumped onto the schedule. We’ll definitely see that more in the final week of the month, but this weekend looks like an “Alien: Romulus” repeat at the box office crown while others fight for spots in the top 10. However, there is at least one notable title, even if it’s not getting notable attention, and that’s the long-delayed remake of The Crow. The original movie, released in 1994, has become a bit of a cult classic as it has a decent-sized fan base, but did not do particularly well in theaters, opening to $11.8 million and grossing $50.6 million domestically. It might actually be most notable for it’s star Brandon Lee, son of legendary martial artist and actor Bruce Lee, dying on set after being fatally wounded by a prop gun. The movie had to be completed through rewrites, a stunt double, and digital effects. The movie went on to spawn three sequels, only one of which was released theatrically. This remake has been in the works since 2008 to varying degrees. Upon finally finishing, Lionsgate has emphasized that it’s another adaptation of the original graphic novel rather than being a remake of the 1994 movie. The movie is directed by Rupert Sanders and stars Bill Skarsgard in the lead role. And despite the marketing having made an attempt to get the movie off the ground, this is another case of the interest level just not appearing to be there as the expectation is an opening in the $6-10 million range, which is certainly not what Lionsgate is hoping for.

Next up we have a psychological thriller from actress turned director Zoë Kravitz, titled Blink Twice. Zoë might best be known for her acting roles in the likes of “The Batman,” “Divergent,” “Mad Max: Fury Road,” and “Big Little Lies,” but she sees her first attempt at directing a film with this movie. She brings with her a decently large cast that’s led by Naomi Ackie playing a cocktail waitress named Frida who becomes infatuated with a tech billionaire named Christian Slater, played by Channing Tatum, at his fundraising gala. He then invites her to join him and his friends on a dream vacation on his private island. All things are going well until the audience remembers that this is a psychological thriller and we suddenly have a group of people all alone on a private island, which means lots of things are going to go wrong and Frida is going to start questioning her reality and work on uncovering whatever truth is there if she’s going to make it out alive. Now looking at this, this does have the cast, crew, and premise to potentially be a surprise. But again, there’s been a lot of horrors and thrillers that have managed to open in the $5-8 million range this year and a late August release doesn’t exactly inspire a ton of confidence. This is distributed by Amazon MGM Studios, which means if you don’t catch it in theaters, there’s a high likelihood that it’ll end up on Amazon Prime at some point before the year is over.

The third release of the weekend sees the return of the Kendrick Brothers, with their latest film The Forge. The Kendrick Brothers, Alex and Stephen Kendrick, have been making these Christian films dating back to 2006 with “Facing the Giants” and have since made things like “Fireproof,” “Courageous,” and “War Room.” They all pretty much have the same basic premise, with a slightly different setting. Life is hard for a character as they face a certain challenge, but when they come to Jesus and accept Christ into their life, he’s able to help them solve their life’s problems. This movie’s character is a kid named Isaiah who recently graduated high school, but has no real plans for the future and needs to start making better life decisions. Now the Kendrick Brothers have actually had decent success in the past in his exact slot. “War Room” opened to $11.4 million in late August 2015, but then held really well and actually took the top spot the following weekend, eventually making $67.8 million domestically. In 2019, “Overcomer” also opened in late August and earned $8.1 million in its opening weekend. That said, in 2021, “Show Me the Father” only opened to $700,181 from 1,073 theaters, but that might be a COVID recovery issue. So no guarantee for success here, but if the movie has a decent grassroots campaign, there’s the potential to surprise, at least in regards to the competition with new releases.

Finally, we have Lionsgate possibly competing with themselves this weekend as, in addition to releasing “The Crow,” they also have plans on releasing the mystery comedy Greedy People. Although if I were to guess, I’d say “The Crow” will be in as many theaters as possible while “Greedy People” might be a more moderate release in a few hundred theaters. I wasn’t initially going to put this on here because different sites disagree on how wide or limited this will be, but I did notice it had quite the cast listing with Lily James, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Himesh Patel, Simon Rex, Tim Blake Nelson, Jim Gaffigan, and others. On the poster specifically is Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Himesh Patel as two cops and the trailers show them investigating a murder and discovering a large sum of money, with a whole lot of things going wrong. And yes, this does appear to be very heavy on the comedy in its approach to this buddy cop/murder mystery film.

August 30 – Sep 2

Sony's "AfrAId"

And now we arrive at the final weekend of the month. And since September 1 is on a Sunday this year, that means Labor Day comes early this year, on September 2, making this the four-day Labor Day weekend, which has historically been very spotty as Hollywood usually avoids the weekend. Recent history has shown that it is actually possible to do well here if you put a movie on the schedule that people are excited about rather than treating it like a dumping ground weekend, but that doesn’t appear to be what happened this time around, thus your guess is as good as mine in regards to what ends up at No. 1. Could it be “Alien: Romulus” for a third weekend? Could “Deadpool & Wolverine” actually rise back up to No. 1 if it stabilizes in future weeks while “Romulus” could be a bit front-loaded? My model says “Deadpool & Wolverine” could be looking at a $10-15 million 3-day weekend, meaning those two movies could be in a battle. Or is one of the SIX new wide releases going to make a splash and take the weekend?

I don’t know if there is going to be a new movie that takes the crown, but if there is, it seems likely that it is the horror movie AfrAId, which is stylized a bit funny there. If you couldn’t tell, it’s the word “Afraid,” with the AI capitalized. Or I’m also seeing the whole title capitalized with “AI” in italics, and in a different color (red vs. black). However you stylize it, the point here is to emphasize the Artificial Intelligence in the title, as the movie is about a family who is chosen to test a new smart home AI, called AIA. And, of course, as this is a sci-fi horror film about rogue AI, the machine they’re testing becomes a little too involved in their lives. The premise of technology taking over the world has been a thing in movies pretty much since new technology has become better. I guess there’s the idea in the back of people’s minds of the horror of technology becoming too much and that has translated over into film many times over. This movie comes via Blumhouse, who is really good at making a quick buck off of a low-budget horror movies and they’re pushing the connection to M3GAN here, a similarly themed horror film that opened to $30.4 million. That’s, of course, the dream here, but anything around the $10 million range is probably going to be considered a success.

Given the timing of the upcoming election season, another movie to possibly look out for is the historical biopic Reagan, about the life of Ronald Reagan, from his childhood to his time in the oval office. This is bound to be quite divisive, as Reagan is seen as the gold standard by most Republican politicians, who also seem to bring him up in their election speeches, while also being seen as one of the worst modern-day presidents by many on the Democratic side. Without making this a political post, I’ll just say that divisiveness often leads to good success at the box office. And given the liberal nature of a lot of critics, this is bound to be a movie that is trashed by critics and praised by a lot of audiences. Many might choose to see it just to be a part of the conversation. From an objective filmmaking standpoint, though, this is directed by Sean McNamara. And when you look at his filmography as a director, he has a long list of very low quality movies, with the occasional hit, so that doesn’t necessarily inspire confidence, but that might not matter much here. Dennis Quaid is playing Ronald Reagan in the movie, so there’s a positive in regards to the movie’s lead actor.

Another movie to potentially look out for, again based on the subject matter alone, is the movie 1992, which was originally titled “April 29, 1992,” which is a reference to the first night of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, sparked by the unrest following the Rodney King verdict. The movie follows two different families caught in the crossfire of all of it, one being a father trying to restore his relationship with his son and the other being a father and son planning a heist at the other father’s workplace. The movie is directed by Ariel Vromen and stars Tyrese Gibson, Scott Eastwood, and Ray Liotta. This was the final film that Ray Liotta shot back before he died in May 2022. He had finished all of his scenes in this movie before he died, so this movie has been on the shelf for a little while. According to IMDb, it even had a brief premier at the Harmony Gold Theatre in Los Angeles back in October 2022. I’m not sure what happened to it in the meantime, but Lionsgate is finally unloading it off their schedule here at the end of August, which again is usually not the best sign.

Next we have a pair of sports films getting released. Although the first of which might just have the sportsing as a brief backdrop and that’s the movie City of Dreams. Inspired by a true story, this tells the story of a Mexican boy whose dreams of becoming a soccer star are shattered when he’s smuggled across the border and sold into a sweatshop in downtown Los Angeles, where he is forced to work a grueling 18-hour work day under a boss who theoretically promises freedom to those who fulfill their quotas, although our main kid quickly realizes that his only actual way out is by figuring out a way to escape. So yeah, this is more of a crime thriller here. And another movie that has sat on the shelf for a while before being dumped at the end of August as it premiered last March at the Mammoth Film Festival and is finally being dumped here by Roadside Attractions. Although the few reviews it does have seems like it’ll lean positive, so perhaps it has a chance of some sort of life either in theaters or on streaming afterwards.

The other actual sports movie here is You Gotta Believe, which seems to be a bit of a traditional, run-of-the-mill baseball story. It’s about a Little League baseball team of misfits that dedicate their season to one of their player’s dying father and eventually do the impossible by making it to the Little League World Series in a final game that, according to IMDb’s description, became an instant ESPN classic. The movie is rated PG, so a solid option for families. And it does have Luke Wilson and Greg Kinnear, so a solid cast with a feel-good story potential. But it doesn’t seem to have much of a marketing footprint yet. I couldn’t even find a Wikipedia page for the movie and the trailer currently only has 373,000 views from Well Go USA Entertainment, the movie’s distributor. So that’s what leads me to believe that this will be more of a smaller to moderate release rather than a movie that’s going to be released everywhere.

And finally, in what is most likely another small to moderate release, we have the space movie Slingshot. This is distributed by Bleecker Street, so the release strategy could go either way, but it stars Casey Affleck, Laurence Fishburne, and Tomer Capone as astronauts who are on a mission to Saturn’s moon Titan. Along this multi-year journey, that could potentially be a fatally endangered mission, one of the astronauts seems to start losing grip on reality. And that is about as much plot detail as I can discover, even by watching the trailers, but I’m sure there’s a few other layers to this space adventure. Honestly it reminds me a bit of the Adam Sandler space movie “Spaceman” that debuted on Netflix earlier this year, as well as “I.S.S.,” a space movie that was released in theaters in January. So there’s been a few of these smaller space movies scattered through 2024. In regards to a comparison, “I.S.S.” opened to $3.1 million and was also distributed by Bleecker Street, so that seems like a fair mark for “Slingshot.” Although “I.S.S.” was released during an empty weekend in January with no other new wide releases and thus managed 2,520 theaters. With six new releases on this weekend total, as well as all the holdovers from the month, “Slingshot” might not have the luxury of that many theaters. But if Bleecker Street actually stars marketing the movie, maybe it can catch some attention.

Movie Preview: July 2024

 

Cinema is dead, they said. People just don’t go to the movies anymore. It’s all about staying home and watching things on streaming nowadays. Especially not family audiences. Why spend all that money to take your kids to the theater now when you can just watch the latest from Disney or Pixar later on Disney+ for just the cost of your monthly subscription?

Well, those were the conversations of last month after a pretty miserable May. Fast forward one month and it’s funny how quiet those people are at the moment. Now that’s not to say that everything is back to the way it was pre-COVID. Times are definitely different nowadays and I think that’s something we just have to accept. And that’s fine. Things are always changing in life. But it now appears in hindsight that the problems with the month of May were simply the individual movies that were on the schedule and not a problem with the industry as a whole. Because, if you haven’t heard, “Inside Out 2” absolutely exploded with a $154.2 million opening weekend domestically, the second highest opening ever for an animated movie, behind only “Incredibles 2” ($182.7 million). Since that open, in three weeks it has already gone on to make $1 billion worldwide, the fastest animated movie to do so. And it wasn’t just that movie that had success. “Inside Out 2” was bookended on the month by $50 million openings from “Bad Boys: Ride or Die” and “A Quiet Place: Day One,” both of which opened on par with previous entries in their respective franchises and above expectations.

And the fun part of all of this is that the success is looking to keep rolling into July. Even before June surprised in a big way, July was always expected to be the biggest month of the summer. Granted, nothing is a guarantee these days, but when you have one of today’s most bankable animated franchises returning to the schedule, paired with everyone’s favorite foul-mouthed superhero, things are looking pretty good. So let’s dive in and explore the possibilities here.

As always, release date information for this post is courtesy of boxofficepro.com and the-numbers.com. The movies listed are the ones currently scheduled for a wide release in the United States and Canada and are always subject to change.

July 3 – 7

Universal's "Despicable Me 4"

As we’re nearing towards the end of the extended 4th of July weekend, there’s been plenty of options to see, with staggered releases throughout the week. Not only are people still seeing “Inside Out 2” and “A Quiet Place: Day One” over the holiday, but we have four new releases and a prominent expansion. Leading the way through all of this is the long-awaited Despicable Me 4. Well, long-awaited for some people, anyways. The minions are certainly quite divisive these days, but the kids still love them. This is the sixth movie overall in this franchise, with now four main “Despicable” movies and two Minions spin-offs. While the first movie was more of a sleeper hit that grew over time, the four movies after that were all mega hits, averaging a worldwide total of $1.026 billion, which is why I mentioned earlier that this has become one of the most bankable franchises, two movies crossing that $1 billion mark and two movies coming awfully close. So with it having been seven years since “Despicable Me 3,” having the full gang together again, going on another mischievous mission of sorts, could be seen as quite the event for certain family audiences after 2022’s “Minions: The Rise of Gru” proved that this franchise still is quite popular. And the advertising has done a solid job of promising plenty of Minions shenanigans in the midst of the return of adult Gru and his family.

The trick here, of course, is seeing what will happen here with the major breakout of “Inside Out 2.” Will Pixar’s huge success steal some of the thunder away from Illumination or will the new animated movie cause the one from last month to slow down a tad bit? Or will it be a miserable summer for parents’ bank accounts as a whole with both movies doing excellent business? “Despicable Me 4” is off to a solid start as it’s looking at a 5-day start in the range of $120-130 million. It’s 3-day opening is looking to be in the range of $75-80 million. Compared to last month’s “Inside Out 2” that doesn’t look super great. But the 3-day openings for the second and third “Despicable Me” movies were $84.2 million and 72.4 million, respectively, and as noted those two movies did just fine in the end.

There are a handful of other movies opening, although much smaller in comparison. In direct contrast to the big family sequel, the adult audience also gets a highly anticipated sequel with Ti West’s MaXXXine. This is third movie in Ti West’s horror trilogy, following “X” and “Pearl,” both of which were released in 2022. “X” is a movie about a group of young adults who go to a rural farm to shoot an adult film, only to get terrorized by a crazy, old woman named Pearl. The next movie, “Pearl,” is a prequel to “X” and is the origin story for the character of Pearl, showing how she became this crazy, psychotic killer. And now “MaXXXine” is the direct sequel to “X,” taking place in 1985, as “X” was set in 1979. In “X,” Mia Goth played both the lead female Maxine Minx and the old lady Pearl. She’ll be back playing at least one of those characters in “MaXXXine” (no spoilers here). Now this trilogy hasn’t quite broken out in the mainstream as both “X” and “Pearl” made just around $10 million domestically, but it’s been quite the buzzy trilogy among some niche film fans, which should lead this new movie to be the biggest of the three. “X” opened to $4.3 million, while “Pearl” opened to $3.1 million. “MaXXXine” in its opening day, which was Friday, opened to $3.2 million, which means it could open in the $8-10 million range for the weekend as a whole, depending on how well it holds and Saturday and Sunday. Either way, its opening weekend could wind up coming close to the previous two movies’ final totals, which would be saying something.

The third major wide release of the weekend comes from Angel Studios with their latest movie, Sound of Hope: The Story of Possom Trot. While “Despicable Me 4” opened on Wednesday and “MaXXXine” opened on Friday, “Sound of Hope” opened right between the two on Thursday, meaning each of the three new movies this weekend had their own opening day. “Sound of Hope” is inspired by the true story of Donna and Reverend Martin from Possom Trot, Texas, as they opened their hearts to foster care children that no one else would take in. The result led to them adopting 77 children. Filming for the movie reportedly took place back in the fall of 2022. Distribution rights were purchased by Angel Studios in February 2024, after which they added “Sound of Hope” to the title, which seems like an obvious attempt to connect the movie to “Sound of Freedom” in a way, which has been Angel Studio’s biggest financial success in the movie realm. Although Angel Studios would love to see something else have the success of “Sound of Freedom,” this latest release is still looking more like it will follow the likes of “Cabrini” and “The Shift,” which opened to $7.2 million and $4.3 million, respectively.

While that concludes the major wide releases (“MaXXXine” and “Sound of Hope” are both opening in over 2,000 theaters, with “Despicable Me 4” opening in over 4,000 theaters), opening in a moderate amount of theaters is the movie Kill, which opened on Thursday in 828 theaters to be exact. This is an Indian film, in the Hindi language, and is about a pair of commandos facing an army of invading bandits during a train trip to New Delhi. Indian cinema has actually done quite well over here in America as a lot of these show up in a moderate amount of theaters and have a decent per theater average. “Kill” opened in 11th place on Thursday with $165,638 and will hope to sneak into the top 10 by the end of the weekend.

Finally, while not a new release, Yorgos Lanthimos latest movie Kinds of Kindness will be more widely available as it expands from 490 theaters to 920 theaters this weekend. It opened in limited release in June and has been slowly expanding in the weekends since as it builds more buzz. Yorgos is quite the unique filmmaker with a very specific style that is certainly not for everyone, but his previous two movies, “The Favourite” and “Poor Things” were both showered with Oscar nominations, so he’s certainly becoming more recognized, even if “mainstream” is probably not a thing he’ll ever care about. “Kinds of Kindness” is another bizarre, off-kilter Yorgos film that will shock some and garner praise from others who know his style. The plot is essentially three smaller movies in one, following a man seeking to break free from his predetermined path, a police officer questioning his wife’s demeanor after her return from a supposed drowning, and a woman searching form an extraordinary individual prophesied to become her spiritual guide. There are many humans starring in this movie, but Emma Stone and Jesse Plemons are the headline acts.

July 12 – 14

Sony's "Fly Me to the Moon"

After that busy holiday weekend, the second weekend of July is more of a cool down week before the final two weekends give us two more blockbusters. “Despicable Me 4” will take a second weekend at No. 1 here, but the top new release will be the comedy Fly Me to the Moon, which looks to be a bit of a satirical take on the moon landing. I’m sure most people are aware of the conspiracy theories that the moon landing was faked and that seems to be what this movie is having fun with. The setting is the 1960s and the goal is to get man on the moon, but when certain government people deem this mission too important to fail, other people are hired to direct a staged fake moon landing as a backup. In the midst of this are characters played by Channing Tatum and Scarlett Johansson, which give this movie its romance angle. There are also a lot of other humans in this movie, like Ray Romano and Woody Harrelson, so it has a bit of a stacked cast. And the advertising has been pushing it decently well. But the big question will be whether it can capture enough attention from audiences or if they’ll instead choose to save their money for the next two weekends.

The other movie that is theoretically sneaking into a few theaters in the sci-fi horror film Lumina. This has not had much of an advertising campaign and comes from a distributor in Goldove that has not yet released anything. But the Goldove YouTube channel has put out a few low qualities trailers in the past few weeks, one of which being a testimonial video from people who claimed to have been abducted by aliens who are definitely “not actors.” Anyways, the movie is certainly fictional and is an alien abduction horror film, written and directed by Gino McKoy in his feature-length directorial debut. I clearly have lots of faith in this, as you can see. Yes, that’s sarcasm. But the-numbers has it listed as a wide release, so I feel obligated to include it.

Another horror movie that I definitely know is real is Longlegs. I listened to a podcast from a guy who saw an early screening of this and called it the best serial killer horror film since “Silence of the Lambs.” Making that claim (this was Joey Magidson from Awards Radar) got him a spot on one of the posters advertising this movie. Anyways, the movie stars Nicolas Cage playing a serial killer who is referred to by the name Longlegs and Maika Monroe as a young female FBI agent who gets assigned to his case. No, this is not based on a true story, but I’m sure it’s inspired by similar cases of Satanic serial killers from the 80’s and 90’s. Being compared to movies like “Zodiac,” “Se7en,” and “Silence of the Lambs” will surely get it some attention, especially if more reviews continue to give it such high praise, but NEON is giving this a limited release this weekend and I’m sure that will lead to an expansion in the weeks following.

July 19 – 21

Universal's "Twisters"

The biggest movie even of the month comes in the final weekend of July, but before we get to that, perhaps the biggest wild card of the month and the summer comes here in the third weekend with the release of Twisters. This movie is a sequel to the 1996 mega blockbuster “Twister,” which made $241.7 million domestically that year, which was the second highest grossing movie of 1996, behind only “Independence Day.” Adjusted for ticket price inflation, the-numbers claims that is the equivalent of $589.5 million in 2024 ticket pricing. So yeah, think of something like “Barbie” or “Top Gun: Maverick” in modern era and that was “Twister” back in 1996. People loved their tornado and disaster movies in the 90s. But is that something that can be replicated today or is it just an isolated 90s phenomenon? There have been disaster movies released in the modern era, but nothing remotely on the level of “Twister” in 1996 in regards to the box office. Speaking of the only movie in 1996 that beat “Twister,” there was an eventual sequel to “Independence Day” in 2016 with “Independence Day: Resurgence.” It opened decently with $41 million, but quickly disappeared with rather sour, toxic reviews as it wasn’t able to capture 90s nostalgia. Will “Twisters” suffer the same fate or will it a bonafide hit? Box Office Pro in their long range forecast is giving it a range of $65-85 million for its opening weekend, which would definitely be a massive success. But critical and audience reaction will be the key to seeing if people are up for watching tornado disaster movies in 2024.

Filling in the gaps in theaters is another smaller horror film being released, this one being Oddity, which is another real horror film that you could see in theaters near you. This one was released back in March at the South by Southwest Film Festival to very positive reaction. Now festivals crowds and general audience crowds can often give two quite different reactions to movies, especially in the horror genre, but “Oddity” does currently hold a 100 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes through its first 18 reviews. This is a movie about a girl named Darcy who is trying to uncover the truth behind her sister’s murder from a year prior. People initially suspected a patient from a local mental hospital, but then that patient also wound up dead. Darcy is a psychic and a collector of cursed objects and pays a visit to a guy named Ted, who was a doctor at the local mental hospital, claiming there is more to her sister’s murder than others are giving credit. Again, this might be a question of exactly how big this release is. This one is listed as a wide release by the-numbers, but it could end up as a smaller release that expands. Either way, it’ll find its audience if the reviews continue to be positive.

July 26 – 28

Marvel's "Deadpool & Wolverine"

And now for the big event of the month. And maybe the year? That’s, of course, the release of Deadpool & Wolverine. The first Deadpool movie in 2016 completely changed the game when it proved that R-rated superhero movies CAN make money. Prior to that, both Marvel and DC strictly stuck to a PG-13 rating with their highest profile releases because there was the thought that you couldn’t do well with the R rating in this genre and there were a few prior examples of movies that showed that. Turns out that if you make a movie that people like that does justice to a character that they love, people will show up. It’s not a guarantee that it’ll make money, but it shows that the possibility exists with the right cast and crew. So yeah, a $132.4 million opening for “Deadpool” was a huge deal. It’s still the highest opening weekend for an R-rated movie. Two years later, “Deadpool 2” came close to matching it with an opening of $125.5 million, proving the first movie was no fluke. But as you may have been well aware of, between 2018 and 2024, there’s been lots of drama on the superhero front, namely Deadpool’s studio Fox got bought by Disney and now Deadpool has the opportunity to enter the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And not just that, but Marvel themselves have been having a really rough time, to say the least. So not only does Deadpool get to enter the MCU, but he’s aiming to be, as he says in the trailers, “Marvel Jesus.” A massive win here with the third Deadpool movie could do wonders for Disney and Marvel, like “Inside Out 2” just did with Pixar. After a very miserable 2023, Disney would love to have another massive win in the summer of 2024.

But how high can “Deadpool & Wolverine” actually fly? Well, as the title suggests, it’s not just Deadpool here. But he’s dragging Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine with him. And give the nature of Deadpool as a fourth-wall breaking comedy, there’s lot to poke fun at here and lots of potential surprises to be had. If you didn’t hear, there was a post credits scene that introduced the X-Men into the MCU and this would be the perfect opportunity to introduce more. Are there more surprises awaiting? I don’t know. I don’t want the surprised spoiled. But I hear there are. And all this combined has people very excited. And it has professional box office prognosticators saying this is going to be very huge. Like, a $200+ million opening weekend type of huge. Some have thrown “Spider-Man: No Way Home” and its $260 million opening into the conversation. I’m not personally predicting that. I’m just relaying what I’ve heard. Box Office Pro has it listed as $175-200 million for the weekend in their long range forecast and maybe it’s also worth pointing to “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness,” which opened to $187.4 million in 2022. Realistically, anything in the range of $120-130 million, which the first two did, is a win. Especially considering the rating. But signs are pointing to it blowing those two movies away. Just remember, parents. This is still rated R. Just because it’s the MCU, doesn’t mean you can take your kids. Don’t get mad at the movie for you not paying enough attention.

Oh. There are two other movies this weekend, hoping for a bit of counter-programming. The Fabulous Four is a comedy that stars Susan Sarandon, Bette Midler, Megan Mullany, and Sheryl Lee Ralph as four friends, three of which are traveling together to be bridesmaids at a surprise wedding for their fourth friend. It seems like a comedy aimed a more adult audience. We’ve seen a handful of movies like this recently in the vein of something like “Book Club,” a group of slightly older ladies going on certain adventures. This could be decent counter-programming for an older crowd not interested in superhero shenanigans.

And as another option for people not interested in superheroes, or wanting to see something else after they have already seen Deadpool, is the movie Didi. This is an independent film out of Sundance this year that also played at South by Southwest and a handful of other smaller festivals. The movie is about a 13-year-old Taiwanese American boy in the summer before high school begins learning how to do things his family can’t teach him in this coming-of-age comedy/drama. This did get great reactions out of its festival run and currently has a 91 percent from 35 theaters. I don’t imagine it’ll make more than a few million this weekend, but it could be a thing that catches on in certain niche film groups.