Box office preview: ‘Missing’ and ‘Alice, Darling’ offer mid-January thrills against ‘Avatar 2’ and ‘M3GYN’
After a couple decent weekends at the box office, we’re getting two weekends with a mixed bag of releases, this one offering two new semi-thrillers in wide release and a few others, but nothing too exciting. Read on for Gold Derby’s box office preview.
In 2018, Aneesh Chaganty’s “Searching” premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, and it was released by Sony/Screen Gems later that year to make $26 million. Now, Screen Gems is releasing “Missing,” the thematic sequel starring Nia Long and Stormy Reid. It was not directed by Chaganty, who is a producer on this one, but rather, two of his editors from “Searching,” Nick Johnson and Will Merrick.
“Missing” has received decent early reviews, but it’s also been fairly low-key compared to some of the month’s other releases even if it will be released in 3,000 theaters, which is a thousand more theaters than “Searching” ever got. It shouldn’t have much of a problem getting at least the $6.1 million opening of that movie, and may give “Puss in Boots” and “A Man Called Otto” a run for third place.
SEE January 2023 box office preview
Anna Kendrick stars in the thriller “Alice, Darling” playing a woman trying to get out of a relationship with an abusive boyfriend while staying on a lake with her two friends. It’s a rare dramatic role for the star of the “Pitch Perfect” series, which has helped Kendrick build quite a fandom of younger women. Directed by Mary Nighy, “Alice, Darling” is getting a wide release by Lionsgate into an undisclosed number of theaters, so it could be in 1,500 theaters or it could be 3,000. I’d probably lean a little more towards the former, and because of that, this may not even make $2 million this weekend, which means it’s probably looking to end up somewhere in the bottom half of the top ten. (Reviews for the movie have generally been decent.)
Crunchyroll’s latest anime release is called “That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime The Movie: Scarlet Bond,” and that, too, is receiving a wide release in an unreported number of theaters. While an anime film might be good for counterprogramming against everything else in theaters, this seems to be getting a last-minute release with very little real awareness, so it might just barely scrape its way into the lower end of the Top 10.
SEE 2022 box office hits: Every movie that made more than $100 million
Hugh Jackman, Laura Dern and Vanessa Kirby star in Florian Zeller’s “The Son,” the French playwright’s follow-up to his Oscar-winning “The Father” from a few years back, which he also adapted from his own play. In the movie, Jackman plays a man whose ex-wife (Dern) shows up to tell him about the emotional issues their son Nicholas (played by Zen McGrath) has been having. Sony Classics will give the movie a moderate release, but without much critical support and little in terms of awards – Jackman got a Golden Globe nomination – it’s hard to imagine this might even make a million this weekend. Essentially, it’s in the same position as the Crunchyroll animated movie in terms of trying to get into the top ten.
Jesse Eisenberg’s directorial debut, “When You Finish Saving the World,” starring Julianne Moore and Finn Wolfhard, will be given a limited release by A24 almost a year after its own Sundance Film Festival. Oddly, this is also about a woman having trouble connecting with her teen son.
Check back on Sunday to see how the above movies did.
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