Welcome back to a brand new edition of box office predictions everyone! This time around we will be looking at the weekend right before the MLK holiday which has proven to be a solid launching pad for a variety of films in the past. This weekend we have two new releases in wide release hoping to make some sort of splash with the action film, Plane, from Lionsgate, and the reboot of House Party from Warner Bros. How might they fare? Let’s find out! Without further ado, let’s get predicting!
Plane
Gerard Butler returns alongside Mike Colter with a brand new R rated action movie that hopes to bring in a lot of older male movie goers who are looking for an action packed experience. After a lackluster 2022, Lionsgate is hoping to come back strong this year with a number of potentially promising releases. Will Plane end up landing in that success zone, or will it face a bumpy ride to theatrical profitability? Let’s dig right in!
Pros:
Prior to Covid, one could make the case that Gerard Butler was something of a butts in seats movie star to a certain extent. His movies may not have been blockbusters, but when the budget was low, he was able to help these movies get to good enough grosses. For instance not only did his “Die Hard in the White House” movie, Olympus Has Fallen, spawn a successful trilogy (a combined $523 million worldwide), but he was able open movies like Law Abiding Citizen and Den of Thieves to better than expected grosses. As long as the film didn’t cost a fortune to make (like Geostorm and Gods of Egpyt), it could do well enough in theaters and then probably do even better on home media.
Even though he’s not exactly a movie star, Mike Colter has made a decent name for himself in the realm of television. He is most recognized as the title character in Netflix’s Marvel series, Luke Cage, as well as starring in the acclaimed CBS series, Evil. Both of these shows have a lot of fans and perhaps his involvement in this film could pique the interest of them, enough so for them to take the trip to the theater.
Marketing has ramped up a bit in recent days which will definitely help in increasing the film’s profile. The trailers have done the job in promising a lot of action movie thrills as well Gerard Butler kicking butt alongside Mike Colter. Ditto the reviews have been decent and saying that movie delivers exactly what one would want from the premise. The fact that it has been in a while since we’ve gotten a real world R-rated action movie like this could help it as well.
Finally, there really isn’t a whole lot of competition in the rest of January, meaning staying power could actually be pretty decent if audience word of mouth is good.
Still though, while I would like to say that this movie has the potential to break out, I still have my reservations on that front.
Cons:
Butler may have been a mid level movie star prior to Covid, but now I’m not sure if he still has that butts in seats draw. His last theatrical outing, Copshop, barely made a dent at the box office when it released in fall 2021 (just $6.8 million global on a $6 million budget) despite good reviews. Granted, Plane is almost certainly going to do better, by virtue of having a higher profile and a bigger marketing push, but it still is worth wondering if Butler is still able to rack up consistent numbers on par with his pre covid output.
It is also worth mentioning that Butler’s films skew more domestic most of the time so it may have a tough time recouping its reported $50 million budget if overseas markets don’t pull a lot of weight.
Finally, the simple fact of the matter is that, these types of older skewing action films have had a rough time as of late. A good recent example of this was Michael Bay’s Ambulance which came out in April of last year and is a similar type of film. It disappointed with an $8 million opening and only finished with $22 million domestic and $52 million worldwide on a $40 million budget. An unfortunate outcome, but at the very least, it did seem to do fairly well on PVOD and probably caught a number of eyeballs when it hit Peacock. I have a feeling a similar fate is in store for Plane , albeit with slightly better legs theatrically.
Final thoughts:
In all, I think Plane is going have a fairly soft theatrical performance. While I do think legs could be solid given the lack of much in the way of new movies this month, I don’t think its going to be some surprise blow out smash. I suspect an opening on par with Ambulance and a domestic total on par with Nobody seems likely. Globally is a bit harder to predict, but I’ll predict a global gross on par with Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard.
So here are my final predictions:
Opening weekend: $8 million
Domestic total: $27 million
Worldwide total: $66 million
Could it fly higher or lower than I expect it to? Sure. Honestly I hope this over performs largely because the marketplace needs more solid products and it can show that there at least some movie stars that are able to open certain films to reasonable success. No matter what happens its likely to make a killing when it hits VOD.
House Party (2023)
The other high profile release of this weekend is the reboot of the classic 1990 comedy, House Party produced by Lebron James. This was actually initially intended to be an HBO Max original, but then was promoted to theatrical status due to a re shuffling of priorities for Warner Bros in terms of film distribution. Will this end up playing like the party of the century or will attendance be low for this get together? Lets dig right in!
Pros:
The original is considered something of a comedy classic, even being recently inducted into the National Film Registry. It was a nice hit back in the day ($26 million on a $2.5 million budget) and even spawned three sequels. Thus those who are fans of the original might have some curiosity in how this new one might turn out.
It could benefit slightly from the Holiday weekend factor as it is a film that skews younger and it could be potentially backloaded over the weekend if word of mouth among the target demographic is strong… and that’s about all of the pros I can think of for this one.
Yeah I’m not feeling very confident in this for a number of reasons.
Cons:
Buzz for this one has been almost nonexistent as there was only one trailer released back in October, but it was a red band trailer and thus could only be played in front of R-rated films. The green band trailer was honestly kind of clever essentially stating that if audiences want to see the “naughty” stuff, they can check out the red band trailer… but if you want to entice more audiences maybe cutting a more conventional green band trailer would have helped. Still I haven’t really hear many people talking about this one and the marketing has been very lackluster as I’ve only seen a handful of TV spots and not much else.
Adding to that, the reviews that have been published haven’t been too kind to the feature, as many have found it to be a largely unamusing romp that lacks the charm of the original. While there is the chance audiences could like it more, with reviews like these even that seems uncertain. Plus, with all due to respect to the stars involved, none of the cast members are butts in seats draws and I don’t think a cameo from Lebron James is going to mean much if people aren’t interested in the final product.
Finally most comedies have had a rough time lately post Covid. With the exception of Jackass Forever and Ticket to Paradise, most of them like Marry Me, Easter Sunday, and Bros have either underperformed or outright bombed last year. I don’t expect House Party to buck that trend.
Final thoughts:
So yeah, I’m expecting House Party to be DOA this weekend. As much as I would like to see more comedies release theatrically, everything indicates that this one is likely to join the swath of them that have bombed recently. I think it’ll open on on par with these releases and will likely receive very little overseas help.
So here are my final predictions:
Opening weekend: $3 million
Domestic total: $9 million
Worldwide total: $13 million
While these numbers are dismal, I still do commend Warner Bros. for going theatrical with it as the sole good thing about David Zaslov’s new regime is that he wants to focus more on theatrical (everything else though… yeah not a fan). Still though the studio is going to have to do a bit more heavy lifting if they want these films to do well.
Holdover Business:
In terms of how last weekend fared the year got off to a very good start with a buzzy horror movie over performing its expectations.
Yes M3GAN was able to capitalize on the buzz it had, thanks to a great marketing campaign that involved a lot of viral videos of the titular character dancing, to a $30 million opening. That is about on par with last year’s Scream and is among the biggest original movie openings in recent memory, just behind Jordan Peele’s Nope. With good reviews, strong buzz from audiences, and the next big horror film not coming until February with Knock at the Cabin, I think its going to leg out very well. With a sequel in the works, it looks like a brand new horror franchise is born!
Meanwhile Avatar: The Way of Water had the second best 4th weekend in wide release ($45 million), just behind the original Avatar as it has passed the $500 million mark domestically and $1.7 billion global, making it the biggest release of 2022 in global numbers. The legs have been extremely impressive for this one and it looks like it might end up getting closer than thought to the original’s cume if it continues to leg out like this. Also holding phenomenally is Puss in Boots: The Last Wish which is nearing $100 million domestic and $200 million global. It it keeps this up it might actually get past the original’s $149 million domestic cume.
Finally I wanted to mention Tom Hanks’s latest film, A Man Called Otto, which is heading into wide release this weekend. It expanded to around 650 theaters and was actually able to nab $4 million. That is pretty darn good for being in that amount of theaters and it bodes well for when the film expand to over 1,000 theaters.
Conclusion:
And that just about wraps up this weekend’s edition of box office predictions! Next weekend will only see the release of the thriller, Missing, which is something of a follow up to 2018’s Searching. I look forward in talking about that as well as how the MLK holiday frame fairs. In the meantime please feel free to sound off in the comments how you think these new releases will fair! Until next time, see you guys later!
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