Saturday, February 1, 2025

Movies of 2025: The Good, the Bad, and the Maybe


Welcome to the year 2025! Before we leave February and enter into January, it’s time to take a deep dive into the full year to see what this year has coming for us! This is always a fun project to do each year, if nothing else than to educate myself as to what’s coming out. I always enjoy looking back on this post in a year’s time to see how everything turned out! Some people on the internet or social media like to rank their most anticipated. I’ve always preferred to take everything and sort them into a few categories: movies I’m looking forward to, movies I’m concerned about, and movies I’m on the fence about for one reason or another or simply don’t know enough about to have an opinion either way. This using my catchy label of “The Good, the Bad, and the Maybe.” The order here is by release date.

This post will be long. Read every word if you want. But I mostly expect people to scroll through and look at highlights and titles, stopping if/when you care to read my brief thoughts on any movie. And, of course, this is not an all-encompassing list. Just highlights to give you an idea of what to look forward to. I tried to list most of the major titles as well as others that caught my eye. But I will have undoubtedly missed something. There’s also lots of movies that come out in the second half of the year that are not on anyone’s radar at the start of the year, especially when it comes to the festival circuit. There’s also directors who are working on projects that might come out this year, but I may have left off because I wasn’t sure if they’ll actually make it by this year or I may have just not known enough about. And, of course, the release dates listed are as of this post and are very likely to change. There’s several from last year’s list that made it again this year and there’s bound to be several from this year that will end up on next year’s list. So any release date is very tentative, especially if a strike or a pandemic hits.

All that said, there’s still plenty of titles here to go through. And for the most part I looked at the release schedule on the-numbers.com for my main source. But I cross-checked that with a few other sites to see what I could come up with. Joey Magidson from Awards Radar also releases an article each year of 100 movies to look forward to for the upcoming year that I looked through. I’ll post that in the comments for anyone curious. At the end of this all, let me know which titles you are most excited for or which ones you are dreading! I’d be very curious to see what you have to say!


The Good


Wolf ManJanuary 17

I already did a full January movie preview, which is why I gave myself a few extra weeks for this post. But I decided to list a few January titles, anyways. Even a few that have come out already. Just for the sake of being a completionist. “Wolf Man” has already been released, was a major flop, and got very mixed reviews. I’m still curious to see it, though. I missed it on opening weekend because I got distracted and decided to catch up on more 2024 movies. It’s Leigh Whannell doing another modern twist on a classic monster movie, like he did with “The Invisible Man” in 2020. He’s taking a big swing and that was bound to be a controversial swing with mixed results. And I can at least appreciate a unique attempt that’s not just another generic monster movie, even if I don’t end up liking it.

CompanionJanuary 31

Do yourself a favor and go watch this movie’s trailer. I have no idea what to expect with this movie, but it looks wild. From the studio that brought you “The Notebook” – and the unhinged creators of “Barbarian.” That’s how the trailer goes. Making you think it’s a cute romantic comedy, only to sweep the rug out from under you and revealing a twisted psychological thriller. IMDb also has it pegged as a dark comedy and a sci-fi. I initially had this under the “maybe” section, because it might be a case of a trailer being better than the movie itself. But reviews came out and it’s currently at a 93 percent on Rotten Tomatoes as of me typing this. So I’m sold!

Dog ManJanuary 31

A spin-off series from the “Captain Underpants” books, written by the same author. The initial “Dog Man” book was released in 2016 after the character first appeared in one of the “Captain Underpants” books. I loved the “Captain Underpants” when I was in Elementary School and I enjoyed the movie DreamWorks did a few years back. I learned over Christmas break that one of my younger nephews currently loves the “Dog Man” books, so this author has successfully spanned several generations and that’s always a cool thing to see.

Love Hurts February 7

We’ve reached the point where Ke Huy Quan gets to be the star of his own action movie, while being front and center on the poster. And I think that’s cool, even if I don’t know how good this movie is going to be.

Heart EyesFebruary 7

We have two movies in the first half of the year from Christopher Landon, writer and director of “Freaky” and “Happy Death Day,” with the other being “Drop” in April. Landon isn’t the director on this one, he’s just a part of the writing team, along with Michael Kennedy, who also helped write “Freaky” and “It’s a Wonderful Knife.” So this seems like a fun writing team and they’re taking on a Valentine’s Day slasher flick, with the Heart Eyes Killer stalking and killing romantic couples. Seems like the perfect Valentine’s Day movie, right?

Captain America: Brave New WorldFebruary 14

Yes, I’m still on the Marvel train. I enjoyed “Falcon and the Winter Soldier” and I like Sam Wilson as Captain America. We also have Harrison Ford cast as the new Thaddeus Ross following the passing of William Hurt and he’s going to turn into Red Hulk in this movie. We also Giancarlo Esposito joining the MCU doing some sort of villainous roll, which is his specialty. Looks like he’s playing Seth Voelker, aka Sidewinder, the leader of the Serpent Society. So as a comic book fan, I think there’s plenty to be excited about. Hating on the MCU is the cool thing to do these days. And I guess that means I’m going against the grain and still enjoying the ride. If being a fan of comic book movies has gone back to being nerdy and niche, then cool. I embrace that!

Paddington in PeruFebruary 14

The first two Paddington movies are what I would label as the perfect family movies. Charming, adorable movies that are extremely hard to hate and great for the whole family. “Paddington 2” is especially fantastic. There’s a reason why it wound up being one of the best reviewed movies ever on Rotten Tomatoes. And I’m actually really upset that some attention seeking troll wrote a negative review several years later just to break it’s perfect score. I suppose 99 percent ain’t bad, though. My only hesitation with this third movie is that it’s not the same director as the first two, so I don’t necessarily expect it to be quite as good. But it came out in the U.K. several months ago and currently holds a 93 percent score, so I think we’re good.

The MonkeyFebruary 21

I’m posting this 2025 preview before I’m posting my list of top movies of 2024. And if you decided to take time reading through this post, you get a surprise bonus. The horror movie “Longlegs” was my favorite movie of 2024. And it wasn’t even much of a competition. I’m not going to review that movie here. Stay tuned to that next post for my reasons why. But that tidbit of information is relevant here because “The Monkey” is another horror movie from the same director as “Longlegs,” that being Osgood Perkins, son of “Psycho” star Anthony Perkins. So of course I’m excited to see what the director of my favorite movie of 2024 is doing next. And while they’re both horror films, it’s worth noting that they’re very different types of horror films. While “Longlegs” was very similar to “Silence of the Lambs” and “Seven,” “The Monkey” is about a toy monkey that goes around killing people. So yeah, you can’t get much different than these two movies. But I’m still really excited!

Mickey 17March 7

Here’s a movie that I feel like I’ve been talking about for years. I know it made this list last year and I feel I’ve been hearing about it for quite some time before then, as well. Production started in 2022 and I feel that it’s had about 300 different release dates. Knock on wood here, but I think it’s finally going to make this release date? Anyways, it’s Bong Joon-Ho’s newest movie, starring Robert Pattinson in the lead role. Bong Joon-Ho is the Oscar winning director of “Parasite.” Him plus Robert Pattinson is all I need to know the be excited for this, but it is a sci-fi film where Robert Pattinson’s character, Mickey Barnes, signs up to be an expendable, meaning he dies over and over, but keeps being regenerated with a new body that has most of the memories in tact. And this goes on until Mickey 17 unintentionally survives and coexists with Mickey 18.

NovocaineMarch 14

Jack Quaid seems like he’s having a lot of fun in 2025. He first is one of the leads in the movie “Companion.” A couple months later and he stars in this action comedy where he plays a guy who is unable to feel pain. When the girl he likes gets kidnapped, he takes advantage of this condition to go hunt her down. The filmmakers behind this are relatively unknown, meaning there’s a bit of a risk here, but they’ve been pushing this trailer quite a bit and I think it looks like a blast!

The Chosen: The Last Supper, Parts 1, 2, & 3March 27, April 3, April 10

Technically not a movie. This is Season 5 of “The Chosen.” Like with Season 4 last year, they’re releasing all of Season 5 in theaters, split up into three different parts. And instead of simply calling it “Season 5,” they subtitled it as “The Last Supper.” Because that’s what this season is focused on. We ended Season 4 with Jesus riding into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday and now we’re going to spend Season 5 on the last week of his life, ending with the Last Supper. The final day of The Crucifixion will be Season 6, while the Resurrection will be Season 7. That’s the current plan here.

DropApril 11

This is the second Christopher Landon horror film to come out in 2025, with the first one being “Heart Eyes.” Landon is the director of “Happy Death Day” and “Freaky.” And while he’s only a part of the writing team on “Heart Eyes,” he’s the actual director on this one. The April release date here has me nervous. And no director is perfect, so there’s always a chance for a letdown. But I’m hoping for another fun horror movie here. This one is about a single mother who goes on a date for the first time in a long time, only to be bombarded with texts from a mysterious sender who says she needs to kill her date or he (the sender of the texts) is going to kill her son.

SinnersApril 18

From director Ryan Coogler, teaming up again with lead star Michael B. Jordan. I’m not sure why this one is being released in April and not during awards season at the end of the year, but Coogler is the director of “Black Panther” and “Creed.” And this is his first film since “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever.” And his first non-franchise film since “Fruitvale Station” in 2013, so that makes this especially notable in my eyes. Premise is about twin brothers (both played by Jordan) returning to their hometown, trying to leave their troubled lives behind, only to find a greater evil back home. And the genre here appears to be… yes. Period piece, action, horror, drama, thriller. IMDb lists “supernatural horror” first, but the trailer gives off vibes of a combination of things. And maybe that’s why it’s not being pushed as an awards movie from Coogler.

The Legend of OchiApril 25

Sundance film from this year, 2025. So it premiered just a few days ago from me typing this. People grew up being taught to fear the ochi, forest creatures. But a young girl runs into a baby ochi and becomes charmed by it. So she befriends it and sets off on a quest to return it to its home. This gives off heavy “E.T.” vibes, with a kid becoming friends with a cute creature that they’re not supposed to like, with the mean, grumpy adults trying to stop them. Initially reaction was positive and it seems like it could be a fun family film.

Thunderbolts*May 2

I’m still a bit confused as to why they put an asterisk in the title of this movie. But this is the second Marvel movie coming out this year, with a third one in July. Yes, they’re back in business in 2025 after the strikes caused them to shuffle their schedule and push most things out of 2024. Some critics of the MCU will claim that their “failures” in 2023 caused them to cancel and postpone everything. That’s not the least bit accurate. When actors, writers, directors, etc. are on strike, big productions can’t always meet tight deadlines. That and that alone is why “Deadpool & Wolverine” was the only MCU film released in 2024. Anyways, this movie reminds me a bit of Marvel’s version of “Suicide Squad,” with the government recruiting a group of morally questionable characters to go on a mission for them. We have Yelena, Bucky Barnes, Red Guardian, John Walker/U.S. Agent, Taskmaster, and Ghost. As well as the introduction of “Bob,” aka Robert Reynolds, who is Sentry, one of the stronger characters in Marvel lore. Honestly, the cast of characters here looks like this will make for quite the riot. It might be the Marvel movie I’m most looking forward to this year, even if this the one that I have the least amount of confidence in regards to it performing well.

Mission: Impossible – The Final ReckoningMay 23

It’s Mission: Impossible. This franchise has, generally speaking, gotten better over time. And Tom Cruise is going to do these movies until he’s in his 80s, trying to one-up himself each time. I do like how they ditched the “Part 1” and “Part 2” here and just with with “Dead Reckoning” and “Final Reckoning.” They should’ve made that decision BEFORE releasing “Dead Reckoning” as I think the “Part 1” of it all made it feel less like an event film and hurt it at the box office. That and they had the unfortunate timing of releasing it just days before “Barbenheimer” became a worldwide phenomenon. Anyways, these movies are a lot of fun. I had a question or two about “Dead Reckoning,” mostly in regards to a certain female character that I’m looking for an answer to one way or another. But outside that, I’m all on board. “Fallout” still remains my favorite of the franchise, but we’ll see what “The Final Reckoning” brings to the table. And even though this gives “final movie of the franchise” vibes, it’s not. Both Tom Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie have expressed interest in continuing. You think I’m joking about Tom Cruise doing these movies until he’s in his 80s. But he said in a recent interview that that’s what he wants to do. He was inspired by Harrison Ford doing yet another Indiana Jones movie.

BallerinaJune 6

A spin-off movie in the John Wick universe. Narratively speaking, Chad Stahelski made “Chapter 4” the final John Wick movie. And Lionsgate was probably, like, “Hey wait a minute. That was our money-making franchise!” So until Lionsgate can convince him and Keanu Reeves to come back for a “Chapter 5,” the spin-off route is where they’re going. Stahelski has spent a good portion of the last decade doing nothing but John Wick movies. And he created four excellent works of art that have completely changed the action genre, so I don’t blame him wanting to take a break and do something else. Him not being a part of “Ballerina” does make me nervous, especially since the new director is Len Wiseman, director/producer of the Underworld movies. But hey, John Wick was directed by a stunt coordinator who had never directed a movie before, so you never know. And I like Ana de Armas. So if her and Wiseman took enough notes from Reeves and Stahelski, I hope that they can make this work.

ElioJune 13

I’d say Pixar is on a roll right now, but they honestly haven’t been off their roll. They just had three straight movies get relegated to Disney+ by Mother Disney, which was definitely a huge mistake. But “Elemental” and “Inside Out 2” got them back on track in regards to making money in theaters, so hopefully “Elio” continues that. I have no reason to doubt that the movie itself will be good, especially since original movies are their biggest forte. This one is about a kid who is obsessed with aliens and has his dreams come true by getting abducted by aliens and joining their universe. As far as its actual financial prognostication? Well, if you want Pixar to continue making original movies, you better go support this. That’s how this game works. If people complaining about sequels only go see sequels, then it’s the sequels that studios are going to continue putting out.

28 Years LaterJune 20

This might be a case where I will be sad when this movie comes out… because the trailer has been so fun to watch in theaters. Now horror sequels have had a spotty record, especially when it comes to delayed franchise entries, so I’m not guaranteeing this will be good. But they do have the writer and director back from the first one. If it’s successful… is the next entry “28 Decades Later”? Followed by “28 Centuries Later”? I’ll be honest and say this gives me a chance to actually go back and watch the first two movies. I have not yet. Whoops.

F1June 27

A movie about a Formula One driver coming out of retirement to mentor a younger driver. It stars Brad Pitt and is directed by Joseph Kosiniski, director of “Top Gun: Maverick.” It seems like the perfect summer “Dad Movie.” And I’m here for that!

SupermanJuly 11

I rank these by the order in which they are released, not by order of my personal excitement. But if I did do a most anticipated ranking, this is my easy No. 1. James Gunn through both the Guardians of the Galaxy movies with Marvel and “The Suicide Squad” and “Peacemaker” has proven that he has a deep love and respect for comic books. It’s going to be an uphill better to fix DC’s overall reputation from general audiences, but I’m absolutely in love with his vision for DC. I’m an enjoyer of all comic book stuff, Marvel or DC. It’s silly to pick one or the other. But I’ve gravitated more towards DC over the course of my life, which is why I was even more upset with Zack Snyder’s incompetence, as he clearly had no idea what or why DC was so good. And it frustrated me that DC gave him the keys to the car and let him do whatever he wanted… until the Justice League fiasco, of course. But James Gunn knows what he’s doing. And not only is he bringing Superman back to his origins, making this feel very much like the Christopher Reeve movies, but he’s also diving into a lot of the actual Superman comic book realms that the old movies never got around to. Superman is my favorite comic book character and it looks like James Gunn is doing him right.

The Fantastic Four: First StepsJuly 25

A speaking of a superhero franchise that has almost never been done right, is the Fantastic Four curse finally coming to an end? Fox was never able to get this right, which is unfortunate because the Fantastic Four is one of the best comic book arcs. But Fox going over to Disney gives Marvel the rights back and now it’s time to do this properly. Pedro Pascal as Reed Richards is perfect. Vanessa Kirby and Joseph Quinn are pretty great choices Sue Storm and Johnny Storm as well. MCU haters will continue to hate, but hey, people liked “WandaVision,” right? Matt Shakman directed all nine episodes of that series and he’s the man in charge here. So is there at least one MCU movie this year that I can get you to be excited for?

The Battle of Baktan CrossAugust 8

The latest film from Paul Thomas Anderson, an 11-time Oscar nominee for movies like “Boogie Nights,” “Magnolia,” “There Will Be Blood,” “Inherent Vice,” “Phantom Thread,” and “Licorice Pizza.” And with that lineup of films, it might shock you to learn that the man has never won an Oscar. Is this the year we fix that? The movie has Leonardo DiCaprio, Benicio Del Toro, and Sean Penn headlining the cast, so it seems like this should be a huge Oscar player. Although none of my sources I went to have told me what exactly this movie is about. In fact, IMDb calls it “Untitled,” while Wikipedia calls it “One Battle After Another.” It’s both the-numbers and Awards Radar that call it “The Battle of Baktan Cross.” So I have no idea what this movie is about or what the title is going to end up being, but it’s Paul Thomas Anderson, so it’s most likely going to be worth watch. Especially with Leo in the lead.

Nobody 2August 15

I had no idea this sequel was coming out until I researched this post. Speaking of John Wick being highly influential to the modern-day action film, in regards to all the movies that tried to be the next John Wick, “Nobody” was a pretty darn good version of that, with Bob Odenkirk playing a normal suburban dad who was secretly a former assassin who gets dragged back into his old life. The movie was a lot of fun and made me want a John Wick/Nobody crossover. We’re not actually going to ever get that, but I’ll take a sequel to “Nobody” as a consolation prize.

Saw XISeptember 26

Another movie that was on my list last year. And honestly I’m happy that the decided to give themselves another year on this one instead of rushing to start up a new trend of yearly Saw movies. But when “Saw X” came out, I decided to do what was a very bloody marathon of the entire franchise and I found myself really enjoying myself. They’re a lot of fun! And what was almost the most surprising is that “Saw X” was one of the best entries. So if they’ve got their groove back and are wanting to do more, I’ll be among the first in line to go see “Saw XI” this Halloween season.

The BrideSeptember 26

...of Frankenstein. As directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal. We’re in a fun era of these remakes of classic Universal monsters. Leigh Whannell is out doing modern twists of them. Robert Eggers took on “Nosferatu” last year and now has his own werewolf movie coming next. And Guillermo del Toro has his own Frankenstein movie coming out at some point this year. But Maggie is taking on this remake of “The Bride of Frankenstein,” which may or may not wind up having an exclamation mark at the end of the title. She has her brother Jake and her husband Peter Sarsgaard in the movie supporting her in some form, while Christian Bale plays Frankenstein’s Monster and Jessie Buckley plays the Bride. We also have John Magaro, Penélope Cruz, Julianne Hough, and Annette Bening in the movie. So it seems like quite the party!

The Black Phone 2October 17

Plots under wraps with this sequel, but I hear buzz that they have some fun, exciting ideas here that will hopefully preventing it from suffering from horror sequel-itis. “The Black Phone” was a fun movie that I enjoyed in 2022. It wound up being more of a crime thriller than a horror film, but you didn’t find me complaining about that. We got Scott Derrickson back doing the sequel, so I’ll trust him. You might know him as the director of “Doctor Strange.” But horror is his main realm, so when he’s doing any horror film, I’m intrigued.

Mortal Kombat 2October 17

Yes, I did enjoy that “Mortal Kombat” remake that came out in early 2021, during COVID recovery. It was a part of Warner Bros’ day-and-date theatrical and HBO Max releases, that was definitely a mistake. But it still opened well despite that. And I guess it did well enough for them to justify a sequel actually happening? And the biggest thing that makes me excited for a sequel is there might actually be a Mortal Kombat in this Mortal Kombat movie, if you know what I mean. The first movie was essentially a setup for the main event, so I’m excited to actually get to the main event and see how much fun we can have with this.

Predator: BadlandsNovember 7

We got the Predator franchise back on track with the 2022 movie “Prey” that wound up going straight to Hulu. And that got a good enough reaction that they’re sending this next one back to theaters, while keeping director Dan Trachtenberg back on board. This and the Alien movies conceptually shouldn’t be too hard to get right, which has made some of the entries a bit baffling. But if we’re on a roll, let’s keep going. Now excuse me while I go spend some time actually catching up with the Predator franchise. I’m well aware of the concept and I know I’ll enjoy. But I have a few months to catch up.

BugoniaNovember 7

The next movie from Yorgos Lanthimos, and now the fourth in a row to star Emma Stone. The two of them seem to have a very good actor/director connection going on and you don’t see me complaining about that. Emma is one of my favorite actresses working and Yorgos movies are always quite the ride. After scoring big time on the awards front with both “The Favourite” and “Poor Things,” last year was a quieter outing with “Kinds of Kindness,” but I still enjoyed it. And speaking of “Kinds of Kindness,” Yorgos also has Jesse Plemons back for “Bugonia.” And the description here of this movie is that two conspiracy-obsessed young men kidnap the CEO of a major company, convinced that she is an alien intent on destroying planet Earth. It’s an English-language remake of the 2003 Korean Film “Save the Green Planet!” And normally I’m a bit hesitant with English-language remakes of foreign films. But first off, it’s been over 20 years now. And second, Yorgos with that ridiculous of a premise? This should be a wild ride!

The Running ManNovember 7

“The running man is an upcoming dystopian action thriller produced and directed by Edgar Wright.” Say no more. You had me at Edgar Wright! I always love it when we get blessed with a new Edgar Wright movie! If you’re wondering if there’s any connection to the 1987 movie of the same title, well… kinda. That movie was based on the 1982 Stephen King novel and was a very loose adaptation. It would be more accurate to say that Edgar Wright’s movie is another adaptation of the novel, one in which he plans on being more faithful to the source material. Funny enough, in said source material, the story is based in the year 2025, in a dystopian United States with the nation’s economy in ruins and world’s violence rising. Not impossible for us to get to that point before this movie comes out? Anyways, the movie is about a reality show where contestants win money by avoiding a team of hitmen sent to kill them.

Wicked: For GoodNovember 21

We are currently in the midst of a year-long intermission and as one of three people on Earth who hasn’t seen the actual play and doesn’t know this story ends, I’m eagerly anticipating the time where I get to see this resolution. It was suggested to me that perhaps I should go see the stage production during this intermission. It’s touring in Salt Lake here soon. I looked up tickets just for fun and… yeah, there’s a reason why I haven’t seen it. Those tickets are super expensive! Anyways, I’m obviously the least qualified person to tell you about the second half of this movie, so we’ll move on.

Zootopia 2November 26

I debated as to whether to be excited about this movie or nervous about. Maybe that alone should put this in the “maybe” category. But as I thought about it, there’s a lot you can do in the world of Zootopia. More crime fighting adventures with Nick and Judy sounds like an adventure to me, unlike the Moana sequel that we got that felt really forced and uninspired. If you’re wondering why we’re getting a ton of Disney animated sequels, it’s because they put out original movies and you didn’t see them. Your fault, not there’s.

They FollowTBD 2025

Now we enter a handful of “TBD” movies. There’s a lot of these and for the most part I left them off this list due to uncertainty of them actually coming out, but I do know they’ve been working on a sequel to the 2014 horror film “It Follows,” which is fantastic! One of the best horror films of last decade. If the same team and director has an idea of what they want for a sequel, I am very curious to find out! Let’s just hope it actually comes out so that I don’t have to put this on next year’s list. Too much waiting is going to kill me.

Thanksgiving 2TBD 2025

I love that we now have a slasher horror franchise for the Thanksgiving holiday. The first one was a lot of fun. And given that our villain is much like the Scream franchise in that it’s one of our characters hidden behind a mask, there’s a whodunit, mystery angle that lends itself to more sequels as another angry townsperson can just put on the mask and start the terror again instead of it being just one person terrorizing people over and over. I’m pretty sure this is planning on coming out around Thanksgiving. But it technically doesn’t have a release date as me typing this.

FrankensteinTBD 2025

As mentioned earlier in this post, we have a remake of “The Bride of Frankenstein” coming out in September. And that’ll be paired with this movie at some point, that being Guillermo del Toro doing his own version of “Frankenstein.” And if Guillermo has decided that this is a project he wants to do, then I am going to be excited to see it. He knows how to properly do a remake and put his own spin on an old story, as he showed with his version of “Pinocchio” a couple years back. And in this version of “Frankenstein,” we have Oscar Isaac as Victor Frankenstein, with Jacob Elordi playing Frankenstein’s monster. We also have Mia Goth, Christoph Walz, Charles Dance, and Ralph Ineson in various supporting roles. So both Frankenstein movies look like a party this year! The only reason this is labeled as TBD is because it’s Netflix and they don’t exactly announce their release dates too far in advance. But I hear this is a November 2025 release. Speaking of which...

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out StoryTBD 2025

Also Netflix. Also most likely coming out in Fall 2025, that according to Deadline. “Glass Onion” was released in November, so that’s my guess here. But yeah, Rian Johnson has his third movie from the Knives Out series and as far as I’m concerned, he can keep doing these as long as he wants. They’re each their own isolated story and it’s the type of mystery series that lends itself to lots of sequels. And if Rian Johnson has enough ideas and continued creativity, and Daniel Craig is still on board to continue to play Benoit Blanc, then let’s do it! This version’s cast includes Josh O’Connor, Glen Close, Josh Brolin, Mila Kunis, Jeremy Renner, Kerry Washington, Andrew Scott, Cailee Spaeney, Daryl McCormack, and Thomas Haden Church.

Caught StealingTBD 2025

Darren Aronofsky is a very complicated filmmaker who rarely makes easy, simple movies. So whenever he has a new movie, you know you’re in for an experience, to say the least. And they’re typically very polarizing. I, myself, have wound up on opposite sides of the fence on multiple occasions with his movies, so there’s no guarantee as to exactly what I’ll think when he has a new movie. But I’m always curious to see what he’s up to next. When he’s on, he has movies like “Requiem for a Dream” or “Black Swan.” But when he’s off, you get things like “Noah” or “Mother!” This year’s movie, if it indeed ends up as a this year’s movie, has Austin Butler playing a burnt out former baseball star get caught in quite the messy crime situation in 1990s New York City. You can definitely see shades of Aronofsky in this premise.

Highest 2 LowestTBD 2025

Speaking of a director who always has something controversial and polarizing to say, the last movie I’m including in this section comes from Spike Lee. From what I’m seeing, this is A24 distributing and they plan on releasing this theatrically sometime in the Spring before it goes to Apple TV+. So maybe I should’ve put it a bit higher? Oh well. But yeah, Spike Lee doesn’t care about what you think of his movies. He’s going to make what he wants and he usually has something political or controversial to say. And regardless of which side of the fence I end up on, this also makes me curious to see what he has next. And this time he has Denzel Washington on board in a crime thriller that is described as a remake of the 1963 Japanese film “High and Low,” which is loosely based on the 1959 novel “King’s Ransom,” which is a police procedural centering on the moral dilemma faced by a wealthy man when he is forced to choose between using his wealth to fulfill a personal ambition or save the life of a kidnapped child. What exactly Spike decides to do with that premise, I don’t know. But police procedurals with moral dilemmas definitely feels like his thing.


The Bad


Den of Thieves 2: PanteraJanuary 10

My goal with this post is to be less negative and more positive. Which is why you noticed a lot more in the good section and the upcoming maybe section and less in the bad section. I didn’t want to force movies into the bad just to even up numbers like I’ve sometimes done in the past, but certain titles are unavoidable. And we start with a couple of January titles that have already released and were not seen by me. Maybe if I’m bored enough at some point, I’ll do a Den of Thieves double feature at some point. But a Gerard Butler action heist film released in January got the exact reaction I expected. With both of these movies, there’s some positive, but mostly mixed to negative. Best case scenario is that I wind up thinking they’re fine, but I’m in no rush.

Flight RiskJanuary 17

The return of Mel Gibson to the director’s chair was not met with positive response. In fact, I don’t think most people even realized it was Mel Gibson who directed this movie. It is a suspense thriller on an airplane with Mark Wahlberg playing a pilot transporting an Air Marshal and a fugitive. The tag line is “not everyone on board is who they seem.” Unless you watch the trailer, which appears to spoil most things. This looks like a movie that should’ve gone directly to Netflix instead of going to theaters. That may sound like an insult, and it is (this movie has a 26 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes and opened to just $11.6 million), but also this is the exact type of movie that does really well on Netflix. Just look at last year’s “Carry On,” which got a ton of views and was also not very good.

In the Lost LandsMarch 7

A sorceress travels to the Lost Lands in a search of a magical power that allows a person to transform into a werewolf. Initially seems like a fun fantasy action/adventure film, starring Dave Bautista and Milla Jovovich. But then I see it’s directed by Paul W.S. Anderson. That immediately made me say, “Oh, nevermind.” The man has never made a good movie. If you don’t believe, go look at his directing credits. I don’t care that he’s adapting a 1982 short story from George R. R. Martin, author of “Game of Thrones.” Bad directors are really good at taking a good source material and turning it into a bad movie. In fact I think it’s funny that the trailer pushes George R. R. Martin’s name so hard. They don’t want you to know who actually directed this thing.

Snow WhiteMarch 21

Do yourself a favor and go to the official trailer for this on YouTube and start scrolling through the comments. You’ll be grateful that this movie exists just so you can see how hard the internet has gone to troll Disney and this movie. Let’s just say that this is another example of a trailer for a movie where the reaction has gone to levels that are beyond toxic. As the biggest fan of the original Snow White movie from the 1930s, I agree that this looks really bad. I do think Rachel Zegler is a fine choice for Snow White. So jokes at her expense are in poor taste. But this movie looks like another Disney disaster.

A Minecraft MovieApril 4

I don’t even play Minecraft and I know this movie is a bad idea. I mean, the game doesn’t lend itself to a movie. I know “The LEGO Movie” exists and somehow turned something that doesn’t lend itself to a movie into a great movie. But you watch this trailer and it’s easy to see that this ain’t gonna be no LEGO Movie. Having Jack Black and Jason Momoa goofing off together in a movie certainly doesn’t hurt things. But no one wanted this. So why is it happening? And why live action?

Until DawnApril 25

I’m not much of a gamer, but me and a friend actually played this game last year. Several times over. It’s a really fun choose your adventure horror game with a fun mythology and a great twists. When I saw that David F. Sandberg was on board to direct a movie version of this game, I was excited. He’s a great horror director and this IS a game that lends itself to a movie. Then I watched the trailer and, uhhh… WHAT? This might be a fun horror movie from a good director if it was its own thing that was titled something else. But it looks like it has zero connections to the game and that’s disappointing.

Lilo & StitchMay 23

NO! MAKE IT GO AWAY!!! I might have zero excitement for “Snow White” as it looks terrible. But this movie has me more angry. These Disney remakes need to stop. But they’re not going to because people keep seeing them. And when people keep seeing them, they continue to make Disney money and thus Disney doesn’t care at all what the reaction to the movies are. They got your money and they’re using it to make more things that will force you to give them their money, regardless of how much you complain. You want them to stop? Then stop giving them money for their bad remakes and go see their original movies instead. Your fault, not there’s.

Karate Kid: LegendsMay 30

This movie REALLY needs to convince me as to why it exists and why we’re getting another Karate Kid movie right after the “Cobra Kai” series finishes. At least they were smart enough to delay this one until after Season 6 of “Cobra Kai” instead of right in between in, like was initially planned. We’re bringing together Jackie Chan and Ralph Macchio, which is a fun idea in concept. But it just seems like we’re pretending that “Cobra Kai” didn’t exist, while doing the same movie we’ve seen over and over, but with a new kid. I don’t know why this bothers me so much, but it does.

How to Train Your DragonJune 13

Disney, you stupid company. Now you are getting DreamWorks to follow your lead. “How to Train Your Dragon” exists! And it didn’t come out that long ago. And despite my complaints about the two sequels, the original movie is great and perfect as is. What in the world can you add to a live action remake that wasn’t already done in that first movie? This movie might wind up being well-crafted from a technical standpoint, but what’s the point? Live action remakes just for the sake of being live action remakes are pointless. Do something different with a remake, with a property that lends itself to improvement. Don’t just take an animated classic and give a carbon copy remake in live action. There’s no point to that.

Jurassic World RebirthJuly 2

This franchise needs to go extinct. Let it get hit by a meteor. “But Adam… DINOSAURS!!!!!!!!!!” You know what, I don’t care. And I hate that it’s still a novelty for some people in seeing a dinosaur on screen because it’s a stupid excuse to justify a bad movie. These movies haven’t been good in nearly 30 years and that’s me being generous in that I personally enjoy “The Lost World.” But yet they still make billions because a dinosaur on screen is all some people need. Give me a good dinosaur horror film like the original and not these trashy Jurassic World movies.

I Know What You Did Last SummerJuly 18

Another horror franchise that we’re bringing back for a legacy sequel. And in many cases I’ve been positive towards these. We’re in a good era for horror films, so I’m open for another surprise. But in researching this specific iteration, I’m not really convinced that this one was a good idea. It’s one that’s been stuck in developmental hell since 2014 and when you dive into all the troubles they’ve been through, there’s just a lot of red flags that go up. Maybe they’ll pull a rabbit out of their hat and wind up with something fun, but I’m not ready at this point to claim excitement.

The Smurfs MovieJuly 18

Why are we doing another Smurfs movie? I’m not even angry or upset. I just see this and it causes me to roll my eyes. And why are we calling it “The Smurfs Movie” when we already made a movie in 2011 called “The Smurfs.” At least give me a subtitle or something that differentiates yourself from the other. At least I’m reading that this one is fully animated and not an attempt at a Smurfs live action.

Freakier FridayAugust 8

I’m not a Disney hater like many are at this point. But when they’ve even got me on the grumpy train, you know that something has gone wrong. At least this one has Lindsay Lohan and Jamie Lee Curtis returning. And in 2025 that’s a fun idea as they’ve both had career resurgences of sorts. But I still don’t feel like this is a Disney movie that’s needed. Just them pumping out sequel content.

MichaelOctober 3

I saw a movie called “Michael” that was being released in October and I initially thought Michael Myers. Nope. Not the slasher character. Michael Jackson, the singer. Another musical biopic for me to hate and the world to love. Almost all of these are the exact same and they’re not going to stop coming. At least this one has Michael’s nephew Jaafar Jackson portraying him, which is cool. But if this is another cinematic Wikipedia article of a popular musician, then you can count me out. I’m also curious to know if they’re going to completely ignore Michael’s controversial later years in favor of just giving us an empty Michael Jackson concert. If they do ignore that part of the story, then maybe more people will be on my side?

Tron: AresOctober 10

This one I feel bad putting here. I don’t actually want to just dump every Disney movie in the bad section. And I’ve been one who has wanted a third Tron movie for a long while now, but it seems like the longer we’ve waited, the worse things have gotten. I think this could’ve been really good if it had come out shortly after “Tron: Legacy.” But now we’ve gone through several directors and landed on Joachim Rønning, director of the Maleficent sequel and the fifth Pirates of the Caribbean movie. We missed the chance to have Daft Punk return for the score because they retired. And now we also have Jared Leto in a lead role for some reason? I don’t want to chronicle every troubled issue in the last 14 years that this has had. You can go read that yourself. It just makes me feel like Disney is setting us all up for disappointment here.

Five Nights at Freddy’s 2December 5

A horror sequel I’m not looking forward to because the first one was really bad. Fans of the game might be upset at me for this, but oh well. If you had to play all the games and know all the lore to love the first movie, then I think you failed as a movie because it should’ve been able to stand on its own. What could’ve been a fun, crazy slasher in an arcade setting turned into a boring, watered-down snooze fest. But it made a ton of money. So you… sequel.

Avatar: Fire and AshDecember 19

I didn’t like the first one. I didn’t like the second one. I’m not going to like the third one. Leave me alone. But I’m impressed that it didn’t take another decade to get this third one made. “Fire and Ash” is also a cool subtitle. I guess we’re going though all the elements with this franchise and fire could be cool.

Horizon: An American Saga Chapter 2TBD 2025

Kevin Costner’s epic Western saga failed so badly that they quickly removed “Chapter 2” from the schedule as it was supposed to come out just a month or two after “Chapter 1.” I honestly wish “Chapter 1” was good. I enjoy myself a good Western. And I like Kevin Costner. But “Chapter 1” was three hours of setup. In a bad way. It cost a ton of money, most of it paid by Costner himself. And it was one of the biggest flops of the year. I believe “Chapter 2” is already finished, so I’m guessing it’ll come out at some point. But I wouldn’t be surprised if Warner Bros simply just drops this one quietly on Max and shuts the door on Costner’s idea of a “Chapter 3” and a “Chapter 4.” Sorry, Kevin. This didn’t work.

The Exorcist: DeceiverTBD 2025

Universal paid a lot of money to get the rights to make Exorcist movies. But “The Exorcist: Believer” didn’t quite work out like they had hoped. I didn’t hate it. But I also didn’t love it and mostly have forgotten about its existence. I’m assuming Universal will indeed try again and release the second movie at some point. They didn’t pay all that money to just give up after one movie. But I don’t exactly have confidence in this one if it does make it into 2025.

The Strangers: Chapter 2TBD 2025

And speaking of horror sequels that are up in the air. For some reason, this one was a planned trilogy before they even released the first reboot last year. Why they thought people would want this, I don’t know. It wasn’t a good franchise to begin with. And to their credit, the budget was low, so they didn’t lose money. $35.2 million on a $8.5 million budget is good for a horror movie. But it wasn’t exactly received well and I guess they weren’t quite ready with the sequel as quickly as they wanted. And if it does come out, I’m not sure people are going to notice.

Deliver Me From NowhereTBD 2025

The world should be aware that a Bruce Springsteen musical biopic is coming at some point this year. Jeremy Allen White is the one playing Springsteen. But I wouldn’t be excited for yet another musical biopic even if it was a good director. But this one doesn’t. Scott Cooper is the man and he doesn’t have the best track record. Nor am I convinced that he’s going to go against the grain and do something different.


The Maybe


The Unbreakable BoyFebruary 21

A movie that I could’ve sworn already came out a few years ago. But apparently it was pulled by Lionsgate just eight days before its release in March 2022, with no explanation and no new release date. Strange. It’s a movie about a kid with autism, starring Zachary Levi as his father. It could be a nice feel-good movie. But it does have some online that are worried that it could be a movie with good intentions that’s a bit misguided. I don’t know if I have much to say on that front. I’m mostly nervous about why they took this movie from the schedule and put it on the shelf for three years.

Last BreathFebruary 28

A movie based on the true story of a diving team who are attempting to rescue their crew mates trapped hundreds of feet below. In fact, not just based on a true story. But this was a documentary that came out in 2019 where the director of that documentary is also the director of this dramatized version. Interesting choices there. People don’t watch documentaries, I suppose. So you gotta do a dramatized version of them. But the same directing doing both is fairly unique. It does have Woody Harrelson and Simu Liu, though.

The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Lonney Tunes MovieFebruary 28

I’m not sure why I’m a bit nervous that there’s a new Looney Tunes movie coming out. If it succeeds then that’s wonderful. We can begin a new generation of Looney Tunes movies and other things. I just think it feels a bit random and out of nowhere. But OK, let’s see how it goes!

Black BagMarch 14

The second Steven Soderbergh movie to come out this year. The first one was a small January horror film called “Presence.” I ended up not putting it on this list because I already have seen and reviewed it on my Facebook page. It’s not bad, but it’s not great. A lesser version of the 2017 movie “A Ghost Story.” Soderbergh is a fascinating director, though, because he’s always jumping around from genre to genre, experimenting with lots of things. This one seems like a more straightforward spy thriller, with a husband and wife on opposite sides of things. Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett. In the case of this husband, are you loyal to your marriage or to your country?

The Last SupperMarch 14

I don’t have a problem with a movie coming out about the Last Supper, especially around Easter time. I’m just questioning the timing of this small Christian film, as it’s getting released two weeks before Season 5 of “The Chosen” comes out, which is also about the Last Supper. It seems like “The Chosen” is going to steal this movie’s thunder.

The Alto KnightsMarch 21

Robert De Niro playing a dual role as two mob bosses in a movie where the trailer makes you think it’s directed by Martin Scorsese. Nope, not Scorsese. Even though it says from the “hitmakers of ‘Goodfellas’ and ‘The Irishman.’” Just Barry Levinson, who did have a good run as a director in the 80s and 90s, but hasn’t done a whole lot of notable things recently. I guess the trailer is referring to De Niro starring in those other two Scorsese movies as “the hitmaker”? Anyways, De Niro as a mob boss is a fun piece of nostalgia. I’m just worried that this is more nostalgia that substance.

The Woman in the YardMarch 28

A horror movie about a woman who keeps mysteriously appearing in a family’s front yard. Directed by Jaume Collet-Serra and starring Danielle Deadwyler. I’m intrigued. But this is also Blumhouse, so this could be really bad or really good and I have no idea which it’ll be.

A Working ManMarch 28

A Jason Statham action film directed by David Ayer. Statham plays a guy who is leaving his old life behind and trying to blend in as a normal guy who works contruction. But then a teenage girl goes missing and he’s forced back into his old life. And based on that, this is most likely a movie that’ll give you exactly what you expect going in, for better or for worse. You decide.

The AmateurApril 11

I’ve been seeing this trailer pushed a lot recently and it has my attention. Rami Malek is playing a CIA cryptographer whose wife gets killed and he’s out for revenge. He tries to convince his agency to train him to go after her. They don’t think he’s capable of this, but they might have vastly underestimated him. Again, it looks fun. But I am sometimes skeptic of April release dates, especially from directors I don’t know much about.

The King of KingsApril 11

Did you have Oscar Isaac voicing Jesus in a small animated movie on your 2025 Bingo card? Or Mark Hamill as King Herod, Pierce Brosnan as Pontius Pilate, and Ben Kingsley as Caiaphas? And that’s not even the end of the list. This all has my quite amused as to how and why they all got roped into this. My biggest question is why are we getting a story about Jesus that’s narrated by Charles Dickens as he tells the story to his son Walter. This all feels quite strange. It’s Angel Studios that got the rights to this, which makes sense. But it was directed by a Korean filmmaker who had primarily worked in the visual effects department before this. I guess I answer my own question when I learn its loosely based on Dickens’ novel “The Life of Our Lord,” which was published 64 years after he died. I didn’t know he wrote that. You learn something new everyday, I suppose.

The Accountant 2April 25

This will give me the opportunity to finally catch up on “The Accountant,” a movie that has developed quite the following since its release in 2016. It got mixed reviews from critics and did decent at the box office, but not great. Yet I’ve heard a lot of people who really love it. And I’ve been meaning to give it a chance, but haven’t done so yet. It has Ben Affleck playing an autistic accountant who “audits financial books” for some of the most dangerous criminals in the world. They got the cast and crew back for the sequel, so I’ll watch both and let you know what I think.

Clown in a CornfieldMay 9

A slasher horror flick about a clown… in a cornfield. I hope it’s fun. It has Kevin Durand in the lead. Directed by the guy who made “Tucker and Dale vs Evil” back in 2010. But this could very easily be a really bad horror film, so we’ll see when the time for this gets a bit closer.

Final Destination: BloodlinesMay 16

Another horror franchise that I have not been caught up on. Should I be nervous or excited that they’re coming back for another one? The first one was James Wan. This recent one is… not. It’s the directing duo behind “Freaks” from 2018, a movie I’ve not heard of, and… the live action “Kim Possible” from 2019? Uhh… that doesn’t inspire confidence.

M3GAN 2.0June 27

“M3GAN” was a surprisingly fun movie from the other year. It seemed like it was going to be really bad, but it ended up being quite the riot. And now with the sequel they’ve graduated from January horror to summer event film because it made a good amount of money. Let’s hope 2.0 is just as fun and doesn’t suffer from being a horror sequel?

The Bad Guys 2August 1

I hear “The Bad Guys” was a really good animated movie from DreamWorks and I’m not sure why I missed it. I’ve been meaning to get around to it. I will at some point, especially since we have a sequel. But as good as DreamWorks has been doing lately, sequels are what they do a lot of once they find a hit and sequels have also what they have the most shaky track record for. And they also have the tendency of making sequels long after they should’ve stopped. So I think it’s natural to be nervous.

The Naked GunAugust 1

We’ve hit a string of movies in this section that I should be more familiar than I am, if you haven’t noticed. I am aware of this to a degree. It started as a series, then had three movies in the late 80s and early 90s. Maybe I should be excited? I don’t know. Maybe I should catch up. I do know comedy sequels coming years after don’t always hit. Liam Neeson and Pamela Anderson in the lead roles is also an interesting combo. Also, I hear this movie might be titled “The Naked Gun 4¼: Law of Toughness,” but I’m not certain?

The Conjuring: Last RitesSeptember 5

The Conjuring franchise is a franchise I am quite familiar with. And of the main Conjuring films, I haven’t disliked any of them. The first one was really good. The other two got a little carried away with their “this is a true story” angle, using that to scare people rather than being a scary movie on their own. Look, it’s not a true story. It’s a really highly embellished one. But I don’t care. Just give me a fun horror movie! Anyways, they claim this fourth one will be the last one in the main saga. We’ll see about that. This one is Michael Chaves and not James Wan. Chaves did the third movie as well as “The Nun II.” I’m not sure why they’ve continued to use him as their dude, but OK.

Light of the WorldSeptember 5

Another animated film about the life of Jesus. This one told from the vantage point of the Apostle John. And no all-star voice cast, so this looks to be a small movie. I am just a bit fascinated that we’re getting two animated movies about Jesus, plus the movie about the Last Supper, in addition to Season 5 of The Chosen. So 2025 is the year of Jesus at theaters? And how many of these are actually going to be worth watching?

Downton Abbey 3September 12

I’m not a Downton Abbey person. I have nothing against. I just haven’t jumped into it. But I suppose I should mention to fans of the show and the movies that September will bring another Downton Abbey movie.

RoofmanOctober 3

Channing Tatum stars as Jeffrey Manchester, the rooftop robber, who from 1997 – 2000 robbed places by drilling a hole through the roof and dropped in. He was captured in 2000, escaped in 2004, and was captured again in 2005. He is currently serving a 40 year prison sentence, with his expected release date being in 2036. I’m not sure exactly which parts of the story the movie is focusing on, and seeing it’s from director Derek Cianfrance (“Blue Valentine,” “The Place Beyond the Pines,” “The Light Between Oceans”) doesn’t get me too terribly excited, mostly just net neutral. But I’m a fan of true crime, so the premise here, with Channing Tatum starring, has me curious.

Now You See Me 3November 14

I would’ve liked this movie to come out in 2019. That would’ve put three years in between each movie. As such, I’m nervous that this is about six years too late. That said, I love the first movie and I also thought the second movie was pretty fun. I’m just nervous that we missed our window of opportunity with this being relevant. And I also might be the only person still interested. Just do me a favor and keep the title as is. Don’t do the “Now You See M3” sort of thing.

DavidNovember 21

Angel Studios is doing something with the Biblical prophet David in November. I think this is going to be an animated as well. So not Jesus this time, but a third animated Bible movie in 2025? Also, this is a fun movie to try and search for. They probably could’ve used some sort of subtitle to make it easier to find so that you don’t just pull up a list of actors named David when you try searching for the movie.

The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarepantsDecember 19

I’m also not much of a SpongeBob person, but I figured some people would be interested to know that another SpongeBob movie is coming out. Just do me a favor and keep with traditional animation here. None of that weird live-action/3D CGI SpongeBob stuff from one of the prior movies. That was a thing of nightmares. Also… are they going to be searching for SpongeBob himself or just his pants?

AnacondaDecember 25

A remake of Anaconda? Uhhh… merry Christmas? I suppose this could work. And it’s not like the original 1997 movie is the greatest thing ever, but dumb monster movies can be fun if you’re in the right mood. I also just learned that there’s actually five Anaconda films. Only the first two went to theaters. The final three were Syfy Channel movies, which totally tracks. This new remake is from director Tom Gormican, the director of “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.” The movie stars Paul Rudd and Jack Black. I’m going to need to see more before I decide if this is going to be a fun remake or a forgettable remake, but that’s not a terrible start so far.

Marty SupremeDecember 25

The Safdie Brothers are the directing duo of Benny and Josh Safdie. They are most notably known for directing “Good Time” with Robert Pattinson and “Uncut Gems” with Adam Sandler. Both of which are excellent. They have a few earlier films that I haven’t seen yet, but those two movies are what made a name for themselves. I do hear buzz that they eventually plan on coming back together to direct another movie, but for now they’ve gone off on solo adventures. “Marty Supreme” is Josh Safdie’s solo directing effort. There’s not a ton of plot details just yet, but Deadline reported this last September that the movie is a sports drama that’s inspired by legendary table tennis player Marty Reisman, with emphasis on the “inspired by” as reports also are that this is a fictionalized original rather than a biopic. It stars Timothée Chalamet as Marty, with Gwyneth Paltrow and Tyler, the Creator as a supporting cast. I do have confidence in this movie. I just put it here in the maybe category because the brothers going off on solo directing adventures is a tad bit of an unknown territory, so we’ll see who does best.

The Smashing MachineTBD 2025

And speaking of Safdie brothers, “The Smashing Machine” is the movie directed by the other Safdie brother, Benny Safdie. There’s a lot of movies that could belong in the maybe category for TBD 2025, and I decided to mostly include none of them. But I figured we just talked about Josh to close the dated list off, so it felt right to talk about Benny. Now part of the reason why the brothers may have gone solo is because Benny Safdie has done a lot of acting since 2020, so he might be wanting to focus on an acting career in addition to directing, but he does theoretically have this movie coming out at some point in 2025. It’s the story of mixed-martial arts and UFC champion Mark Kerr. And it has Dwayne Johnson playing Mark Kerr, with the real Mark Kerr getting writing credit with Benny as a consultant. Emily Blunt co-stars with Dwayne Johnson. Based on cast and premise of both brothers’ separate sports dramas, I might be slightly more excited for “Marty Supreme,” but the Dwayne Johnson factor might give this one an edge when it comes to box office. So I’m curious as to how this friendly brotherly competition plays out.

Monday, January 13, 2025

Movie Preview: January 2025

The year 2024 has come and gone and we are currently just over a week into the brand new year. As such, I will soon begin to work on my yearly preview of 2025 as a whole, but before I do that, it’s time to take a deeper look into our very first month of the year – January 2025.

January is always an interesting month. There’s always three major story lines when it comes to what movies will be playing at your local theater throughout the month. The first is that there are always plenty of holiday holdovers. Second is the movies that open in limited release at the end of the previous year and expand during January around when Oscar nominations get announced. And the third, of course, is the brand new releases in January. The holiday holdovers this year include “Mufasa,” “Sonic 3,” “Nosferatu,” “Moana 2,” and “Wicked” – the five movies currently occupying the top five spots at the domestic box office. That group helped December earn $977 million total, the second highest month of the behind only July’s $1.18 billion total. And it brought the year as a whole to $8.56 billion, just short of 2023’s $8.91 billion. Prior to COVID hitting in 2020, the five years leading up to that all finished in the $11 billion range, so we’re not quite at were we used to be, but we’re not too far off.

In this monthly preview, we’ll focus mostly on the expanding releases and the new releases. That provides movie-going audiences with quite the variety of things to see. The new releases in January historically aren’t usually the most high quality movies as January is often one of those dumping ground months. But that’s balanced out with plenty of the awards hopefuls that strategically open in limited release to qualify for the Oscars, but then wait until January to open wide when the competition isn’t as high and/or when they can take advantage of the Oscar nominations to boost their profile. So that all leaves us with plenty to talk about as we dive in and explore this month!

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.


January 3 – 5

Vertical Entertainment's "The Damned"

You may have noticed that I am again a week late putting this post out. I often like getting this post out before or during the first weekend of the month. As such, last week I went to work on this… and noticed that the first weekend of January had no new releases that were opening in at least 1,000 theaters. So there wasn’t much to talk about in that regard, thus I allowed myself a bit of extra time before I did this as the first part of January wound up being fairly busy for me.

In recapping the weekend, the ongoing battle of “Mufasa” and “Sonic 3” turned in the favor of “Mufasa” this weekend. “Sonic 3” had taken the first two weekends, but wound up being more front-loaded as fans of the franchise turned out more on opening weekend rather than waiting around. That’s often the case with popular, established IP, so there’s no surprise there. With “Mufasa,” demand for a prequel to the 2019 remake of “The Lion King” wasn’t incredibly high, which led to the low opening weekend. But as word of mouth came out as more positive than expected, that led to a more back-loaded run as more families decided to give it a chance in ensuing weekends. And as noted in the intro, “Nosferatu,” “Moana 2” and “Wicked” rounded out the top five.

The new release that wound up with the highest opening was The Damned, an Icelandic horror film that opened in 732 theaters. It’s described as a movie about a 19th-century widow having to make an impossible choice, during an especially cruel winter, when a foreign ship sinks off the coast of her Icelandic fishing village. It wasn’t particularly well received by those who did see it as it wound up with a 65 percent on Rotten Tomatoes and a 6.2 on IMDb. Not terrible, but not great. The overall result was it opening down in 13th place with just $769,721.


January 10 – 12

Lionsgate's "Den of Thieves 2: Pantera"

The first new major wide release of the new year is Den of Thieves 2: Pantera, a sequel to a movie that maybe most people didn’t expect to actually get a sequel, but “Den of Thieves” was a January action film released back in 2018 that didn’t necessarily do particularly well. The movie is a heist film where a… den of thieves… set out to pull off a heist of the Federal Reserve Bank. The thieves were led by Pablo Schreiber, O’Shea Jackson Jr. and 50 Cent, while Gerard Butler led the LA police force in stopping them. The movie opened to $15.2 million in January 2018 and finished with $44.9 million domestically and $80.1 million worldwide. On a budget of $30 million, that was apparently enough to justify a second go-around. Although it took a few years, waited for a pandemic, and bounced around a few different studios before landing at Lionsgate. STX distributed the first movie and they sold the rights in 2023, initially to Briarcliff before it ended up with Lionsgate. But in this sequel, the escaped thieves are off to Europe to attempt another heist. And our LA police officer played by Gerard Butler has followed them there. Because, you know, why not? The first weekend of January saw “Mufasa” at the No. 1 spot with $23.5 million. And with the way that’s been holding, it might be in for a weekend total of $14-18 million, meaning that “Den of Thieves 2” is going to have to match or exceed the opening of its predecessor if it wants to take away that top spot. And it remains to be seen what the interest in this now franchise is after a five year gap between the first and the second movie, so it seems likely to take a backseat while “Mufasa” reigns for one more week.


[UPDATE: I typed this section before the weekend was finished and before I officially saw what the box office numbers are. I decided I wanted to keep my thoughts in tact. But the update here is that “Den of Thieves 2” won the weekend with just over $15 million, matching the debut of the first, while “Mufasa” fell to second with $14.2 million, a drop of 39 percent, which is its steepest so far and was thus on the lower end of what I projected. “Game Changer” opened to $2.1 million while “Better Man” earned $1.1 million in its first weekend of wide release. “The Last Showgirl” continued to not report numbers, but I can confirm via my local theater that it does, in fact, exist.]


While “Den of Thieves 2” is the only new major wide release, the Indian film Game Changer will also be released in an as-of-yet unknown number of theaters. As I’ve mentioned in the past, these films from India aren’t necessarily the best at reporting box office numbers or advertising their existence to the mainstream. They just kinda show up, make a few million in a weekend or two, then bow out. The most recent one was “Pushpa: The Rule – Part 2,” which opened to $4.8 million in 1,245 theaters. “Game Changer” isn’t a “Part 2,” so I don’t know if it’s going to open that high or in that many theaters, but we’ll see when the weekend is complete. It’s about an IAS officer trying to fight against a corrupt political system in another three-hour adventure. The trailer gives vibes of a one-man army with some crazy action sequences and random music and dance numbers. So, you know, par for the course.

That’s it for new releases, but as mentioned in the intro, another big story of this month is the expanding 2024 releases and this weekend will see a pair of those that will hit wide release. The first of those two is Better Man, which has been hanging out in 6 theaters since Christmas and will now expand into 1,289 theaters. This tells the story of British singer/songwriter Robbie Williams, who started his music career in the late 1990s and has since released 12 studio albums, the most recent of which was released in 2019. This is one of two musical biopics currently in theaters at the moment, the other being “A Complete Unknown,” which tells the story of Bob Dylan. So audiences currently have the option of heading out to learn about both Bob Dylan and Robbie Williams. What makes “Better Man” unique is that Robbie Williams is portrayed as an anthropomorphic chimpanzee using CGI and motion capture. Jonno Davies does the motion capture work in the movie, while Davies and Robbie Williams himself team up to provide the vocal work.

The other expansion this weekend is The Last Showgirl expanding into 780 theaters. Box office data wasn’t reported for the movie while it was in limited released, so I don’t know how many theaters it was in or how much it made, but it is eligible for the 2024 Oscars and is being reported as an expansion and not a new release, so I’m confident that it had a release of some sort at the end of December. The movie’s title is fairly descriptive in this instance. It’s about a showgirl who has had a successful 30 year run, but not has to plan her next steps after the show abruptly closes. Pamela Anderson is in the lead role here and while the movie itself hasn’t had a ton of awards buzz, Pamela Anderson’s performance actually has. She got a best actress nomination at both the Golden Globes and the Screen Actors Guild Awards and now the attention turns to see if she can earn the label of Oscar-nominated actress Pamela Anderson.


January 17 – 20

Universal's "Wolf Man"

Monday, January 20 is Martin Luther King Jr. Day in the United States, meaning it’s a four-day holiday weekend at the box office. Often in January that’s the busiest box office weekend of the month. This year it’ll be led by the new horror film Wolf Man. Universal has been attempting or desiring to create a new Universal Monster cinematic universe for some time now. And I don’t think that’s what’s going on here, but it is the second adaptation of a classic Universal Monster movie from director Leigh Whannell, with the previous one being 2020’s “The Invisible Man,” which both performed well at the box office and was well regarded from critics and audiences. The movie only had three weekends in theaters before its run got cut short due to COVID, but it still managed $64.9 million domestically and $139 million worldwide in those three weeks, which considering its $7 million production budget is excellent. Plenty of success for Leigh Whannell and Universal to justify doing another one of these. The premise here is pretty self-explanatory. The movie is a modern remake of the 1941 movie “The Wolf Man.” Family gets attacked by a werewolf at night and man gets clawed by said werewolf and starts turning into a werewolf himself. The movie initially had Ryan Gosling attached to star, but he left and was replaced by Christopher Abbott. Whannell himself also left for a bit due to scheduling conflicts before coming back, so this has had plenty of production drama. “The Invisible Man” opened to $28.2 million back in 2020, which is about the range that “Wolf Man” is being projected to open around

The other new wide release for the weekend is the comedy One of Them Days, starring Keke Palmer and SZA as two roommates whose rent money gets blown by one of their boyfriends, causing them to go the extremes to avoid eviction and keep their friendship in tact. Comedies of late have had a really hard time in theaters. It seems that, for the most part, that’s a genre that people have become conditioned to watching mostly on streaming. In fact, Adam Sandler has found a very strong niche on Netflix with his comedies and they don’t even get released in theaters anymore. Every once in a while there’s a theatrical comedy that breaks out, but that’s few and far between and hard to predict. Recent examples of comedies in the calendar in this time of year include “Drive-Away Dolls” last February opening to $2.4 million, while the remake of “House Party” in January 2023 opened to $3.9 million. Best case scenario might be the Jennifer Lawrence comedy “No Hard Feelings” opening to $15 million in June 2023, but that was both a summer movie and had a huge movie star in Jennifer Lawrence. The biggest name “One of Them Days” has is SZA. And she’s of course a really popular singer, but can that translate into box office success? I’m guessing not. But this might be a movie that finds success on streaming later in the year.

Those two movies are it for new releases this weekend, but as I’ve mentioned several times in this post, there will be a handful of movies expanding this month due to the Oscars. And Oscar nominations will be announced during this weekend, on Sunday, January 19. Initially the plan was for the announcement to be on Friday, the 17th, but the voting period was extended two days due to the Los Angeles fires, and as such the announcement was postponed two days, from Friday to Sunday. Expect movies that get Oscar nominations to expand into more theaters to take advantage of the awards buzz to make themselves more widely available. Given the timing of the announcements on a Sunday morning, it remains to be seen if said movies will expand during this weekend or the following weekend.

Officially listed on the-numbers.com’s release schedule for a wide expansion this weekend is September 5, a movie that chronicles the 1972 Munich massacre terrorist attack at the Summer Olympics, from the vantage point of the ABC Sports crew that were covering the events. This movie is based on the same events that are the subject of Steven Spielberg’s 2005 movie “Munich.”

While “September 5” is the only movie officially listed for expansion on the site, other movies that have not yet had a wide release, and are currently hiding in less than 100 theaters include, but are not limited to, “The Brutalist,” “Nickel Boys,” “The Seed of the Sacred Fig” and “Santosh.” The french animated movie “Flow” has been slightly more widely available than those movies listed. It was released at the end of November and has had a max theater count of 377. If it gets the nominations expected for animated feature and international feature, it could expand further as well. Also, movies like “Anora,” “A Real Pain,” “Conclave” and “The Substance” have already had a wide release in the latter half of 2024, but could return to more theaters. Again, these movies could be this weekend or next weekend. And how many theaters they add is not yet known. But if you’re wanting to catch up on the awards movies you haven’t seen yet, this could be a good opportunity to do so.


January 24 – 26

Lionsgate's "Flight Risk"

While a lot of the big releases and expansions in January take place over the holiday weekend, with maybe some additional expansions this weekend, given the timing of the Oscar nominations, the movies coming out this fourth weekend of January definitely feel like… a January. Not to say there isn’t any quality here. It’s just that it’s common for studios to just dump things in January to get them out of the way. And it doesn’t look like any of these four new releases have a ton of potential at the box office.

With that said, the movie that seems to have the most potential is the suspense thriller Flight Risk. This sees the return of Mel Gibson to the director’s chair in what feels like the most unheralded and unceremonious return of his career. Not saying the movie going to be bad, but usually Mel Gibson is a much bigger deal. He’s only directed five previous movies and those movies are “The Man Without a Face,” “Braveheart,” “The Passion of the Christ,” “Apocalypto,” and “Hacksaw Ridge.” And now nearly a decade after “Hacksaw Ridge,” he’s come back with… a small plane thriller that’s being dumped in January? It’s just a bit odd, is all. Eventually he has a sequel to “The Passion of the Christ,” which is about the resurrection, but that’s either later this year or early next year. Anyways, as described by Lionsgate, “Flight Risk” is about a pilot (Mark Wahlberg) transporting an Air Marshal (Michelle Dockery) accompanying a fugitive (Topher Grace). As the flight goes on, tensions soar and trust is tested, as not everyone on board is who they seem. And if you’ve watched the trailer, you’ll know exactly what they mean by that. And maybe they’ve spoiled the big reveal in the advertising? I guess you’ve gotta advertise the movie somehow. And if interest level didn’t seem particularly high, perhaps Lionsgate felt the need to do something to get people’s attention here.

What I haven’t mentioned in this post yet is that the Sundance Film Festival will begin at the end of this month, starting January 23 and going through February 2. And while that doesn’t effect directly affect the theatrical releases this weekend, I point it out because the second wide release this weekend is a horror film from last year’s Sundance Film Festival, NEON’s Presence. This is a movie directed by Steven Soderbergh, who continues to play around with the genre quite a bit. And this time around he’s taken the traditional haunted house story and flipped it to a degree where it’s a haunting movie from the perspective of the ghost or the spirit rather than the people living in the house. That’s a premise that sounds a bit like the A24 film “A Ghost Story” from last decade, although that movie was more of an unconventional drama and not really a horror film. Soderbergh’s last movie was “Magic Mike’s Last Dance” and that opened to $8.3 million in February 2023. Prior to that, most of Soderbergh’s movies went straight to streaming. The last theatrical release outside “Last Dance” was “Unsane” in 2018, which opened to $3.8 million. He hasn’t had a movie open north of $10 million since 2012, so he hasn’t been a huge theatrical draw. And that doesn’t seem likely to change here. However, NEON purchased this film for just $5 million, so on their end, the bar for success isn’t exactly super high.

It’s been three months in a row now where I’ve brought up Angel Studios in this post, so they’ve remained pretty consistent in releasing new movies as of late. Their movie this month is called Brave the Dark and is about a troubled teen with a dark past that has led to him getting into a lot of legal troubles. He’s bailed out of jail and taken in by his drama teacher, who is trying to work with him to help him get his life straightened out. While Angel Studios has been consistent in releasing movies, they’ve also been rather consistent in how much those movies have made. They released nine total movies in 2023 and 2024 combined. And seven of those movies have been between $10-20 million total domestically. The two outliers on both ends are “Sound of Freedom” exploding to the tune of $184.2 million domestically, while “Sight” made just $7.2 million. So statistically it seems likely that this opens around $5 million and ends up finishing between $12-15 million. The movie actually premiered back in 2023 to a few smaller film festivals, so it’s one that’s been around on the shelves and in production for a while now.

Rounding things out, GKIDS will be releasing the anime film The Colors Within. The movie is about a high school student named Totsuko who as the ability to see people as colors and becomes particularly fascinated with her classmate Kimi. The two of them end up joining a band with another student and develop their friendship while writing and playing music. The movie was released in Japan back in August 2024 and has its worldwide release handled by a few different distributors, but as mentioned its GKIDS that’s handling the North American release. Looking back at other movies GKIDS has distributed here, in 2020 and 2022 they released “Weathering with You” and “Belle” in those respective Januarys. The two movies opened similarly, with $1.8 million and $1.5 million. Anime here in the states is sometimes hard to predict. Everyone once in a while something breaks out and does really good in comparison, but it’s still more of a niche audience at the moment. Certainly no where as close to as big as it is in other countries, especially over in Asia.


January 31 – February 2

DreamWorks Animation's "Dog Man"

The final weekend of January has one day in January and the other two days in February. I always count the weekend in the month that it begins in for those posts. That’ll split things up nicely for January and February. Four weekends for January and four weekends for February, given that there were no new releases in the first weekend of January. Anyways, in previous years the first Sunday in February was the home of the Super Bowl and that meant a not so good weekend for movies, unless they counter-programmed. But the NFL recently added a week to their schedule and that pushes the Super Bowl to the second weekend of February, which is February 9 this year.

That leaves this weekend wide open and it should rather easily be lead by the new DreamWorks movie Dog Man. If you have any younger kids around in your life, you might be aware of this one. This animated movie is based on a series of books, or graphic novels, that currently has 13 installments. They come from author Dave Pilkey, who is the author of the Captain Underpants series. In fact, Dog Man come into existence inside of the Captain Underpants series, first showing up in “Captain Underpants and the Terrifying Return of Tippy Tinkletrousers” when George and Harold get sent to detention and make their first comic: “The Adventures of Dog Man.” That book was back in 2012. Dog Man got its first official solo outing in 2016 and the general idea is that this is a new hero with the head of a dog and the body of a human, first created when an officer and his dog are injured together on the job and get a life-saving surgery that puts them literally together. In regards to DreamWorks and the Captain Underpants movie realm, the first Captain Underpants movie came out in June of 2017. It wasn’t necessarily DreamWorks’ biggest hit. It opened to $23.9 million and finished with $73.9 million domestically. But it continued via a Netflix series beginning the next year that so far has had three seasons and several spin-off specials. So it’s maintained its popularity. Box Office Pro, in their long range forecast, has pegged “Dog Man” to open in the $25-35 million range, which aligns with the Captain Underpants movies, especially if you adjust a bit for inflation.

Pairing up with “Dog Man” this weekend is the psychological thriller Companion, a movie in which the trailer has a lot of fun with. It starts out making you think that it’s a cute, romantic comedy for Valentine’s Day, playing some sweet music and saying that it’s from the studio that brought you “The Notebook” and is cordially inviting you to experience a new type of love story… before shifting tones and revealing that this is actually more of a horror film with Jack Quaid playing some sort of psychopath who has these humans trapped, then reveals that this is from the unhinged creators of “Barbarian.” I don’t know exactly what’s going on, nor do I want to dive too deeply so that I don’t accidentally spoil the experience the movie has in store. What I do know is that Jack Quaid seems like he’s having fun here. In addition to being in the 2022 “Scream” movie and the Amazon Prime series “The Boys,” he made an appearance in “Oppenheimer,” has done some voice work for “Star Trek: Lower Decks” and “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” and has this movie and the movie “Novocaine” in March. So he’s an actor who’s definitely having a moment. If this movie did follow the trajectory of fellow Warner Bros movie “Barbarian,” that opened to $10.5 million in September 2022. The $8-12 million range seems to be where a lot of horror movies are landing these days for their opening weekends.

Finishing off this month, we have the war thriller Valiant One, which is about a US helicopter that crashes in North Korea, which then sees the surviving soldiers and others have to find their way out on their own, given that they’re not going to get a lot of military support while in North Korea. This doesn’t appear to be based on anything, and doesn’t have a cast or crew with many recognizable names. So expectations probably aren’t too high and is one of those movies that’s just getting thrown into the end of January. It’s also being distributed by Briarcliff Entertainment, a smaller studio who has yet to have a movie make more than $10 million at the domestic box office. In October of last year, they released “The Apprentice,” which opened in 10th place to $1.6 million, then in December they opened the horror film Werewolves in 11th place with just over $1 million. So that’s the type of release we’re looking at here.

Wednesday, December 11, 2024

Movie Preview: December 2024

We have arrived at the final month of the year. And that comes on the heels of a massively successful Thanksgiving season that was, in terms of box office totals, the biggest ever. During the month I did a couple of deep dives on my personal Facebook page in regards to an analysis of this box office phenomenon, so I’ll forgo getting into it too much here, but nevertheless, while going into the month many were trying to make “Glicked” happen (“Gladiator II” + “Wicked”), in a parallel way to “Barbenheimer” from last year, it was instead “Wicked” and “Moana 2” that put on quite the show, giving the end of November two $100+ million openings in back-to-back weekends, opening just five days apart, with “Gladiator II” being a decently successful third wheel to the party.

Now as we move onto December and into the Christmas season, I project that there will be a lot of Thanksgiving leftovers to go around. This duo of “Wicked” and “Moana 2” might be the driving force throughout December, too, especially since there’s not really a December release on the scale of a Star Wars, Avatar, or Spider-Man that we’ve seen in Decembers past. But as this post is focused on the releases that do exist on the calendar, I’ll say that there is quite the wide variety of releases that exist, it’s just that most of them will come with a bit of an interesting conversation with no guaranteed success as opposed to the broadly appealing Hollywood blockbusters that we often see at this time of year, and did see during Thanksgiving. But hey, even if excitement levels might vary, the polarizing nature of many of these definitely gives us plenty to talk about in this post, so lets dive in and explore what’s out there!

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.


December 6 – 8

A24's "Y2K"

This first weekend of December is already in the books. The weekend was dominated by the aforementioned Thanksgiving holdovers as “Moana 2,” “Wicked,” “Gladiator II” and “Red One” took the top four spots. I actually had this part of the post typed up before the weekend started, but got busy with various things. If I’m being honest, I wasn’t too concerned about getting this post out before this weekend because most of the fun happens closer to Christmas. The first weekend of December is often dominated by the Thanksgiving slate. Hollywood usually avoids this weekend in regards to bigger release in order to give a bit more breathing room before the Christmas blockbusters. As such, there were no new releases that opened above $5 million. Most of them opened below $3 million and in a slightly different order than I expected, so with the benefit of hindsight, I went back and re-wrote this. But there are a lot of them, so buckle up. I go through these quick.

The highest-grossing new release was the Tegulu-language film Pushpa: The Rule – Part 2. This opened in fifth place with an estimated $4.8 million from 1,245 theaters. I say estimated because actual results weren’t posted for this one. There are a lot of these Indian films that come out and I don’t often cover them. And that’s not out of a lack of desire, but many of them come out of nowhere with little to no mainstream advertising or scheduled release dates. The American distributors for these do a great job of opening these movies in specific locations where their target audience shows up, leading to high per-theater totals despite the low theater counts. But reporting numbers is not something they do good at. They sometimes even only post the first weekend results, and usually only the estimates. So it’s hard to project and forecast. But nevertheless, this movie is a sequel to the 2021 film “Pushpa: The Rise – Part 1.” It’s about a character named Pushpa Raj, who is a smuggler that works in the realm of smuggling red sandalwood, rising up in the smuggling industry while avoiding the authorities. Both are three-hour Indian action films. And if you’ve seen movies like “RRR,” you’ll know that these long and silly Indian action films are quite common in Indian cinema.

Despite opening in just 846 theaters, the next highest new release was Solo Leveling: The ReAwakening. This opened in seventh place with $2.5 million. In between this and “Pushpa: The Rule – Part 2” was actually the IMAX re-release of “Interstellar,” which pulled in $4.6 million from 165 IMAX theaters. But back to “Solo Leveling,” this started as a South Korean portal fantasy web novel in 2016 and was then adaptated into a webtoon in 2018. Season 1 of the anime series adaptation was released earlier this year beginning in January and has 12 episodes. “Solo Leveling: ReAwakening” is actually a recap of Season 1 that tacks on the first two episodes of Season 2, which starts in January of 2025. So anyone who was a fan of Season 1 can head out to theaters to get a head start on Season 2

Sliding in right after “Solo Leveling” is actually not a movie, but rather the concert film For King + Country: A Drummer Boy Christmas. Taylor Swift certainly popularized this current trend of recording one of your concerts and putting it into theaters. She wasn’t the first to do something like that, but with how much she made that has certainly inspired more to give it a try. This concert film from For King + Country was recorded at one of their performances in the Toyota Center in Houston, Texas, and pulled in $2.3 million from 1,540 theaters. The popular Christian band also made a movie about their story called “Unsung Hero,” which was released back in April. It was more about their parents discovering their sister’s talents, but it was written and directed by Joel Smallbone, one of the brothers in the duo. In 2025, they will apparently be going on a brief touring hiatus to work on their next musical project and next movie.

The movie that I initially had first in this post was the horror comedy Y2K. And I listed it first because it was the movie that was released in the most theaters – 2,108. In fact, it was the only new release to open in over 2,000 theaters. So if you managed to go to your local theater this past weekend, there’s a good chance you saw posters for it or noticed it on the box office kiosk when you purchased your tickets. But the box office numbers indicate that you may have also chose to skip it and see something else because this one did not connect with audiences, nor did it gain their interest. The movie is a horror comedy about the Y2K crisis. If you’re too young to know what I’m talking about there, back in 1999 a lot of people were worried about what would happen when the calendar turned over to the year 2000. Nothing actually happened. But there did exist conspiracy theorists who thought something would. This movie is comedy in the vein of “Superbad,” but portrays a high school New Years Eve party where the appliances and technology all come to life and start killing all the teenagers at this party. And maybe it’s a premise that would’ve worked had it come out closer to the actual year 2000. But in 2024, it just didn’t connect. It probably didn’t help that on Rotten Tomatoes the critics score was 44 percent and the audience score was 49 percent. So poor word of mouth from those who did go that resulted in a ninth place finish with just $2.1 million.

Rounding out the top 10 was the holdover “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” pulling in another $1.5 million. Just outside the top 10 in eleventh place with $1.1 million was the final wide release of the weekend, Werewolves, which opened in 1,351 theaters. I guess people just weren’t in the mood for horror-related projects this weekend. The Halloween spirit has evaporated. Or maybe this one just wasn’t advertised very well. It’s almost exactly what it seems like. It’s a monster movie about werewolves. Specifically it’s about two scientists who are trying to stop a mutation that turns people into werewolves after being touched by a super-moon the year before. There weren’t a lot of critics who reviewed this one. Just like there wasn’t a lot of humans overall that went into see it. But of the 35 critics on Rotten Tomatoes that submitted a review, they were split down the middle as it has a 51 percent score. This might be the type of movie that ends up on a streaming service somewhere, but theaters was not the place that it performed well.

And just for fun, just to show how many other movies showed up in moderate release this weekend, Vertical Entertainment released The Order into 603 theaters, earning $877,855. We had another concert movie released, with Laufey’s A Night at the Symphony: Hollywood Bowl, which captured one of her recent performances with the LA Philharmonic, which played in 133 theaters and made $845,370. The documentary RM: Right People, Wrong Place opened in 595 theaters and made $626,534. Its subject is BTS leader RM. The Return, an adaptation of the second half of “The Odyssey,” starring Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche as Odysseus and Penelope, opened in 629 theaters and made $361,507. Trailer Park Boys Presents: Standing on the Shoulders of Kitties was released in 285 theaters and made $210,000. And finally, the horror comedy Get Away, which stars Nick Frost and is about a family that goes on vacation to an island that winds up being inhabited by a serial killer, opened in 474 theaters and made $104,976. If I counted right, that’s a total of 11 new movies that opened in at least 100 theaters. You might find an interesting combination at them at your local theater as you go see the other big releases. Now onto the next weekend!


December 13 – 15

Sony's "Kraven the Hunter"

I mentioned at the beginning of this post that there’s not really a movie on the scale of a Star Wars, Avatar, or Spider-Man coming out this month. Well, the word “scale” was the most important there because with Spider-Man, I was referring to the December 2021 release of “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” which opened to $260 million domestically. No, there is not a movie of that scale getting release this month. But there is a Spider-Man movie coming out. Or Spider-Man adjacent, that is. And that’s Sony’s release of Kraven the Hunter, the latest in their series of Spider-Man villains and other characters getting their own movie without the presence of Spider-Man. Kraven the Hunter has been around in the comics since 1964 as one of Spider-Man’s greatest foes. He’s typically a big-game hunter whose goal in life is to beat Spider-Man and prove himself as the world’s greatest hunter. Aaron Taylor-Johnson will be playing him in this film and he’ll be hunting… something. Not Spider-Man in this movie. But they’ll give his origin story here and we’ll see where and how they use him in the future. I’d say I’m not sure what Sony’s overall plan is, but honestly I don’t know if Sony knows what their plan is. It seems they’re throwing things at the wall to see what sticks, and most of it isn’t sticking. In this realm of movies, “Morbius” opened to $39 million, which itself was seen as a disappointment. But that looks great in comparison to “Madame Web,” which opened to just $15.3 million earlier this year. The Venom movies have done well, but even the third one opened to just $51 million, which is a far cry lower than the first two, which opened to $80 million and $90 million, respectively. So there’s not been a whole lot of optimism or excitement for “Kraven the Hunter.” And it having been delayed several times doesn’t help it’s case. It’s tracking to open higher than “Madame Web,” but that’s not a particularly high bar. They have leaned into the R-rating this time. We’ll see if that hurts or helps. Many fans wanted “Morbius” and “Venom” to get that rating, so those fans will get their wish in that regard with “Kraven.”

I do find my intro a tad bit amusing in context of this weekend. I say no movie on the scale of Star Wars, Avatar, or Spider-Man. But there was kind of a Spider-Man movie opening this weekend and it’s paired with a Lord of the Rings movie as the franchise returns to the animated realm with The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim. Again, scale is the key word here, though. All of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies opened in December. The average opening of the six movies is $65.8 million, yet this one is tracking to open in the $5-10 million range. I feel the reasoning behind that is a combination of awareness not being super high and people being not quite sure what to do with this. Movie adaptations of Lord of the Rings started as animation before the live-action movies came out, so it’s not like that’s completely unique. What is unique is that this movie is anime-style specifically. And thus it seems like it will perform more like an anime film rather than a Lord of the Rings film. Anime is increasing in popularity here in the states, but it’s still not the most popular medium, comparatively. A lot of them open in the $5-10 million range, give or take a bit, with the highest hitting around $20-30 million. If this movie hit the latter range, that would probably be considered a huge success, but it isn’t seeming likely. In regards to story, this is set 183 years before the original trilogy and tells the story of the House of Helm Hammerhand, the legendary King of Rohan. Not helping this movie’s case is that recent trips to Middle Earth haven’t exactly been received as warmly. The original trilogy is a classic to many. The Hobbit movies… not so much. And “The Rings of Power” has had two seasons of mostly mixed reviews. So the Middle Earth novelty has maybe worn off a bit. People might be waiting for something more universally praised, which hasn’t quite been “The War of the Rohirrim” so far as early reviews have it sitting around 65 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Not terrible, but not great, either.


December 20 – 22

Disney's "Mufasa: The Lion King"

While the prior weekend gives us an appetizer into familiar franchises leading up to Christmas, the weekend right before Christmas, which is on a Wednesday this year, is where the real party begins. Again, holdovers are certain to still be strong throughout the season. But in terms of the two big new releases, it’s poised to be a battle of two major family films, both of which are tracking to open in a similar range. But I’ll start here by talking about Mufasa: The Lion King, a prequel to the 2019 remake focusing on the origins of Mufasa. “The Lion King” has been one of Disney’s biggest films ever since its release ever since its release 30 years ago, so it makes sense that they keep returning to it in various ways. And despite the very mixed reaction to the 2019 movie (and “mixed” might be putting it nicely), the branding was still very strong as it opened to $191.8 million domestically and finished with $543.6 million domestically and $1.661 billion worldwide, one of the biggest box office performances ever, currently standing at No. 10 on the all-time worldwide box office chart. And if you know Disney well enough, you know from the moment that happened that they weren’t going to let that go without a follow-up of some sort. And they had options of what to do here and they ultimately decided on the prequel route, telling the story of how Mufasa and Scar came to the point of going from brothers to bitter enemies. Based on the trailers, it seems they are going the route that Mufasa was an orphan who was befriended by the young prince Taka and adopted into their family. Taka eventually becomes known as Scar. We of course know how things end. But the goal of a prequel is to show the journey of how they got there.

Before moving onto the next movie, how well is this actually going to do at the box office? Well, the first comparison that came to my mind in the Disney remake realm is “Alice in Wonderland” from 2010. That’s another movie that, for various reasons, both made a ton of money and wasn’t really highly regarded by audiences. It initially opened to $116.1 million in 2010. When the sequel finally came out six years later, it opened to just $26.9 million. I highly doubt “Mufasa” is going to dip quite that low. The Lion King brand will help it do at least somewhat decently. But in terms of a percentage drop-off from a first movie to its second movie, that might not be too far off. Box Office Pro projects that the movie will open in the $55-75 million range, which puts it in the realm of 2015’s “Cinderella” or “Maleficent,” both of which opened just below $70 million. So that wouldn’t be terrible. But compared to a first movie that opened to $191 million, that would be a huge drop-off. Now this does come from Academy Award Winner Barry Jenkins. Not that many families or Disney fans will recognize that name, but the fact that he’s directed a movie that won best picture makes for an interesting discussion. Is he here just for his Disney paycheck to fund his next smaller film? Or does he have a good story on his hands that he wanted to tell? If the response to the movie is at least average or better than the first, that might not lead to a bigger opening, but if word of mouth is positive, Christmas releases have a tendency of holding really well throughout the month and into the new year. So that might be a better judgment of how its received rather than the opening weekend.

And now to its competition. Another family-friendly film targeting a very similar demographic. And another franchise film. This is the release of Sonic the Hedgehog 3? Is it possible that Sonic pulls the upset and defeats the massive Disney film? Early tracking says its quite possible as Box Office Pro’s latest long range forecast pegs it in the $65-85 million range. Famously the first movie released their trailer, got a lot of complaints about the design, then postponed the movie to completely redo Sonic’s design. The final result ended up pleasing audiences quite a bit and it opened to $58.0 million. It’s final result is hard to look too far into because COVID hit a few weeks after its release, but the sequel in 2022 opened to $72.1 million and finished with $190.9 million. There’s been generally positive reactions to both movies, which bodes well for the third movie. The second movie introduced Tails and Knuckles into the gang along with Sonic. And now the third one introduces Shadow as an antagonist for them to deal with, with Keanu Reeves as the voice cast. Jim Carrey also returns as Dr. Robotnik, as he’s been in all three of these movies. So all things considered, there’s a solid chance that this matches or improves upon the second movie and thus actually takes the weekend. It’s also worth noting that December releases often open smaller and have longer legs. So even if “Sonic 3” doesn’t improve upon the second one on opening weekend, it’s conceivable that it might hold better throughout the holiday if its received well and could outgross the second movie’s $190.9 million domestic total. Regardless it should make for an interesting race at the box office. Christmas has proven that multiple movies can coexist at the same time throughout the holiday season, but two movies aimed at a similar target audience will definitely test that. And if I were to guess, “Mufasa” might be the one to underperform while “Sonic 3” overperforms,” but we will see how this plays out.

Tagging along for the ride, just for fun, will the latest from Angel Studios, the movie Homestead, a movie that in a press release earlier this year, Angel Studios co-founder Jeffrey Harmon described as a hope-filled, family apocalypse story. “Homestead goes on a wild ride through the crash of civilization, only to reveal that family, community, and love are the ultimate survival advantage,” he said. That makes for a bit of an interesting combination of genres. An apocalyptic action thriller with a touch of hope, faith, and religion. The movie is based on a book titled “Black Autumn” by Jeff Kirkham and Jason Ross, and stars Neal McDonough and Dawn Olivieri in the lead roles. The initial goal of this is to also transition it into a series as well that will pick up where the movie leaves off. Angel Studios has been desperately trying to chase the success of “Sound of Freedom” last year, which grossed $184 million domestically. But they have yet to have a follow-up movie gross over $20 million since then. Their last attempt was during the Thanksgiving season where “Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin” opened to $5 million against “Wicked” and “Gladiator II.” It quickly disappeared from theaters after just three weeks. I’m guessing “Homestead” might follow a similar trajectory.


December 25 – 29

Searchlight's "A Complete Unknown"

Christmas hits on a Wednesday this year, and we have four movies opening right on Christmas Day. Which means the box office release strategy this month reflects that of last month around Thanksgiving. Yes, Thanksgiving is obviously on a Thursday, but the movies that opened that week opened on the day before – Wednesday. Leading the pack will probably be “Sonic 3” and “Mufasa” again, but of the four new ones, it’s like that A Complete Unknown will lead the way. This is the latest in the long string of musical biopics that Hollywood keeps churning out. This month’s feature is Bob Dylan and the movie reportedly manages to fit around 40 Bob Dylan songs in the movie, with the actors doing their own live singing and playing their own instruments, as it follows his life and career from January 1961, when he moved to New York City, up until his 1965 concert at the Newport Folk Festival. The movie will attempt to drawn in audiences both old and young, with the older audiences coming for Bob Dylan and his music, while the younger audiences might be showing up for Timothée Chalamet. These musical biopics have been very hit and miss as of late. And while it’s debatable as to whether Dylan was as big of an influence as the likes of Elvis or Queen, whose musical biopics did very well, the Chalamet factor and the holiday season could lead this to decent results. Reports are that this is one of Chalamet’s best performances that should lead him to another Oscar nomination. Early reviews are mostly positive as it currently sits at 75 percent with 68 reviews counted. That’s not unanimous, rave reviews, but high enough to indicate that this could be a good crowd-pleaser.

Is it Christmas? Or is it Halloween? Well, we might be doing a bit of a blink-182 and having Halloween on Christmas because this next movie is the horror film Nosferatu, a remake of the old classic by Robert Eggers, director of “The Witch,” “The Lighthouse,” and “The Northman.” The original 1922 “Nosferatu” was among the first on-screen adaptations of Bram Stoker’s 1987 novel “Dracula.” It was a German adaptation that was technically an unauthorized and unofficial adaptation of the book, but it was very much one of the most influential movies for the horror genre and is still quite prevalent in pop culture over 100 years later. Early indications are that this Robert Eggers remake is very much a Robert Eggers film. He’s a filmmaker who loves becoming completely enveloped into the time periods that he explores, getting as dark and realistic as he can. He’s not a director who is interested in holding back or pandering to mainstream audiences. This has led his movies to be somewhat divisive. Either you’re all in and love his takes or his movies rub you the wrong way. “The Witch,” for example, had a 91 percent critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, but a 60 percent from audiences and a C- CinemaScore. If you’re looking for a fun, mainstream Dracula adaptation, this might not be your thing. But early critical reviews have it at a 95 percent. So it seems like it’ll be par for the course for Eggers. And if you’re wondering why Christmas for this movie, the likely answer is that it’s being positioned for awards consideration rather than the holidays. Eggers’ biggest opening weekend was “The Northman” with $12.3 million, while “The Witch” in 2016 opened to $8.8 million. So this isn’t necessarily expected to be a huge hit, but brand name awareness could lead it to being Eggers’ highest opening.

Speaking of movies positioned for awards consideration as opposed to the holidays, we might as well lead right into Babygirl while we’re at it. If watching erotic thrillers is what you love doing for Christmas, then you do you, I suppose. But that’s why I say this is an awards play rather than a holiday play. Oscar nominations will be around the corner after this movie’s release and we’re currently in the thick of the awards season, so A24 would like this movie fresh on people’s minds. Whether or not the movie as a while gets showered with nominations is up for debate, but Nicole Kidman is the lead in this movie and it’s her performance that’s getting the high praise that seems like it could be leading her to another Oscar nomination. She plays a high-ranked CEO who embarks on a forbidden romance with an intern who is much younger than she is, so the movie is one that explores the complexity of power dynamics and sexuality within a professional setting as Kidman is nearly 30 years older than her co-star Harris Dickinson. Although you might not realize the gap is quite that large just by watching the movie. The age gap is one of the main points of the plot, but it’s still nevertheless quite impressive that Kidman is nearing 60 because she doesn’t look even close to being that old. She’s one of these Hollywood actors who managed to find the Fountain of Youth. Probably the same Fountain that Tom Cruise found.

And finally, a movie that might be looking to please both holiday audiences and awards season voters, instead of just the latter, is the sports drama The Fire Inside. The movie itself might not be Christmas-specific with its themes, but seeing the latest sports drama over the holidays is a fun past-time for many. “The Fire Inside” tells the story of Claressa Shields, a professional boxer and mixed martial artist. She is one of only four boxers in history – male or female – to hold all four major world titles in boxing (WBA, WBC, IBF, and WBO) in two weight classes. She also won gold medals at the 2012 and 2016 Olympics, making her the first American boxer to win consecutive Olympic medals. She was also the first American woman to win an Olympic medal in boxing, given that 2012 was the first year that women’s boxing was a part of the Olympics. I’m not sure how much of this movie I just spoiled by talking about this recent sports history, but her being a gold-medal winner 12 years ago is also in the trailer and the IMDb description of the movie, so I educated myself on her history. This is the type of movie that’s more about the journey and her influence on others around her rather than the final result. The movie debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival this year and currently holds an early 96 percent from 26 reviews, so it was well received there, which bodes well for awards consideration and audience interest. It actually has a decent chance at opening higher than the previous two movies mentioned, or at the very least holding well over the holidays and into January. Feel-good sports dramas with positive reviews have a tendency to hang around.