by Conan Simmons – August 30, 2021 – 5:24 am
Theater only releases are doing what most all day-and-date releases are unable – make a profit.
Produced by Jordan Peele at a budget of about $25 million, the latest horror offering ‘Candyman’, a sequel to the fan favorite 1992 fright fest, scared audiences to the tune of $22.4 million. Add that with the roughly $5 million the film took in overseas and ‘Candyman’ is on a firm, albeit slightly slow, path to turning a profit. Unlike the big budgeted action flicks produced for nearly $250 million that release day-and-date streaming with a box office intake of $20 million if they’re lucky.
‘Candyman’ also has earned the distinction of director Nia DaCosta becoming the first Black female director to have a film debut number one in theaters. Nia DaCosta may not have time to properly celebrate that achievement at the moment because she is currently directing the sequel to ‘Captain Marvel’. The future installment in the long running Marvel Cinematic Universe is set to be called ‘The Marvels’. The reason is the superhero adventure will include a number of superheroines joining Brie Larson’s Captain Marvel. The new costumed adventurers enlisted in the cosmic shenanigans are Iman Vellani as Ms. Marvel, who will also headline the eponymous Disney+ series, and Teyonah Parris as Monica Rambeau, last seen gaining her superpowers in ‘WandaVision’ on Disney+. The character of Monica Rambeau has held many super aliases in comic book lore, it’s possible in the film she may go by Proton or Pulsar or some other pseudonym.
‘Candyman’ is a success though not the blockbuster many were predicting when the movie was originally scheduled to release last year. The relevance that was hyped for the movie in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement last summer doesn’t seem to have connected with everyone. There were the expected reviews praising the film as film critic Odie Henderson does at RogerEbert.com. In contrast there were also reviews that felt the movie missed its intended mark such as the review film critic Angelica Jade Bastién gave over at Vulture where she calls it a “soulless, didactic reimagining”.
Regardless of the mixed to positive reviews ‘Candyman’ should be able to hold in the Top 5 for a few more weeks though it will lose the number one spot as ‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’ opens next weekend.
The rest of Weekend Box Office Top 5 are holdovers from last weekend. ‘Free Guy’ and ‘Jungle Cruise’ both continue to show Hollywood that star power can still open movies. ‘PAW Patrol: The Movie’ and ‘Don’t Breathe 2’ continue the trend of animated movies and horror flicks being favored by audiences. As a new release will dominate theaters next weekend it’s time to say goodbye to at least one film and that will be ‘Don’t Breathe 2’.
Will theaters be able to breathe again next weekend as the latest Marvel movie hits the big screen?
WEEKEND BOX OFFICE TOP 5 (August 27-29, 2021)
- ‘Candyman’ – $22.4 million – horror (debut)
- ‘Free Guy’ – $13.6 million – comedy (drop $5.2 million, 28% down)
- ‘PAW Patrol: The Movie’ – $6.6 million – animated (drop $6.4 million, 49% down)
- ‘Jungle Cruise’ – $5 million – adventure (drop $1.2 million, 19% down)
- ‘Don’t Breathe 2’ – $2.8 million – horror (drop $2.3 million, 45% down)
Total for the Weekend Box Office Top 5 comes to $50.4 million. This is an increase of 7% for a gain of $3.5 million over last weekends total of $46.9 million.
As we stated last week, ‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’ will open in theaters only Labor Day weekend and needs to earn somewhere in the ballpark of $90 million, though $100 million up would be the best news theaters will have in almost two years. The last Marvel film, ‘Black Widow’ was able to earn $80 million as a day-and-date release streaming on Disney+. With theaters the only available viewing option (piracy doesn’t count) more Marvel fans should be eager to leave the house and enjoy what cinema has to offer.
The Delta variant doesn’t seem to be having much affect in terms of discouraging people from gathering as evidenced by the many sporting events lately at full capacity crowds. Yes, the variant is harmful and Covid-19 is still an ongoing issue. Theaters still have mask requirements and social distancing rules plus with 56% of the U.S. population fully vaccinated, a number that keeps growing, it really doesn’t look like the variant will do too much to hurt the box office numbers going forward. Unless, of course, there is a major surge that causes theaters to shutdown again like is currently happening in China where a reported 30% of theaters recently reclosed. Next weekend will tell the tale for sure. It’s possible that our forecast is off the mark and theaters won’t enjoy a huge weekend. As long as ‘Shang-Chi’ earns $50 million or more the film should be considered a hit, anything less and it may spell doom and gloom for the superhero genre.
We still expect ‘Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings’ to have around a $90 million weekend.
The Marvel adventure should also be able to dominate the U.S. box office for practically the entire month of September. Granted the film is already generating mixed positive reviews with even the early fluff reviews unable to avoid saying things like the film is “sometimes crazier than is needed” and has “pacing issues”. Other reviews make it clear that the film is solidly within the genre without transcending the genre, or about what all superhero movies, especially Marvel movies, offer on the regular. So, yeah, Martin Scorsese is gonna love it.
The only other films that come anywhere close to toppling the crown from ‘Shang-Chi’ in the next month will be the wide release of action film ‘Copshop’, opening two weeks later on September and the wide release of ‘Dear Evan Hansen’ on September 24. Neither film is expected to hit number one at this time. There are two notable limited releases coming around September 24. The Clint Eastwood directed, and starring, neo-western ‘Cry Macho’ along with biopic ‘The Eyes of Tammy Faye’ starring Jessica Chastain and Andrew Garfield. Both films are targeting awards season attention and are likely to show up among the nominees come Oscar time.