Box office preview: ‘Mean Girls’ musical looks to win MLK Jr. weekend with ease

The holidays were dominated by two movie musicals — “Wonka” and “The Color Purple” — and just two weeks into January, we get a third one. “Mean Girls” is likely to not only be the biggest movie of the extended MLK Jr. weekend, but of the entire month. Read on for Gold Derby’s box office preview.

Twenty years after Tina Fey‘s influential comedy “Mean Girls” introduced the world to the elitist high school clique known as the Plastics, with a cast that included Lindsay Lohan, Rachel McAdams, Lizzy Caplan and Amanda Seyfried, “Mean Girls” returns to theaters, this time as a musical transposed from a successful run on Broadway.

Fey is back as teacher Ms. Norbury, as is her “SNL” cast mate Tim Meadows as his character from the 2004 movie. They’re joined by a new young cast that includes Angourie Rice (from the “Spider-Man” movies) as Cady Heron – the role played by Lohan – who gets in with a new version of the Plastics that includes Renée Rapp (“The Sex Lives of College Girls” as Regina George (played by McAdams in the original movie). When she falls for Regina’s ex-boyfriend (Christopher Briney), the Plastics turn on Cady, just like the 2004 movie. The new cast also includes “30 Rock” regular Jon Hamm, Jenna Fischer from “The Office,” Ashley Park, Auli’i Cravalho (“Moana”), Telugu-American actress Avantika (“Spin”), Bebe Wood and more.

SEE Grab the popcorn and sound off in our movie forums

Reviews for “Mean Girls” will hit sometime on Wednesday morning, although the movie might be somewhat review-proof since the original movie has such an avid and diehard fanbase, as does the musical. Presumably the audience will mostly be female, but ages could range from teens to the older fans of the original movie, who would be in their 30s or even 40s by now.

The original “Mean Girls” opened with $24.4 million and grossed $130.7 million worldwide, a bonafide hit for Paramount back in 2004. The four-day weekend should help the musical version with its younger audience to the tune of $30 million or more, an easy victory over a holiday with schools closed on Monday. Unfortunately, “Mean Girls” might end up hobbling Timothée Chalamet‘s hit musical “Wonka,” which is likely to lose more theaters.

Offering some counter-programming, Jason Statham returns with the R-rated revenge thriller “The Beekeeper,” directed by David Ayer (“Suicide Squad”), which has the action star playing a former government agent who goes on a path of vengeance after a good friend dies after being robbed of all her money.

SEE Box office: All time domestic top-grossing movies

Statham appeared in four movies last year, ranging from “Fast X” – the 10th in that franchise – to the sequel “Meg 2: The Trench,” and then two other action flicks (“Expend4bles” and “Operation Fortune: Rue de Guerre”) that didn’t fare that well. Statham’s mostly male fanbase generally like seeing him in certain types of roles, and “The Beekeeper” definitely fits that bill, with a fun light-hearted trailer filled with R-rated violence and the potential for gore.

As with “Mean Girls,” reviews for “The Beekeeper” will run sometime on Wednesday, but in general, they probably won’t necessarily be positive, since it’s not a movie meant for the critics. Either way, it should be good for $11 to 13 million over the four-day weekend with very little direct competition to keep it from taking second place.

British “The Harder They Fall” director Jeymes Samuel (who also happens to be the brother of pop star Seal) returns with “The Book of Clarence,” a biblical comedy (of sorts), starring Oscar nominee LaKeith Stanfield and an impressive ensemble cast of black actors, including David Oyelowo, Omar Sy (“Jurassic World”), RJ Cyler, Micheal Ward (“Empire of Light”), and Oscar nominee Alfre Woodard. It also stars James McAvoy and Benedict Cumberbatch appearing in a small role. Reviews for the movie out of its London Film Festival premiere were relatively positive, although the movie is less likely to do as well with American critics.

Produced by Shawn Carter, aka rap mogul Jay-Z, “The Book of Clarence” is only opening in about 2,000 theaters across the country, but it will be targetted to many regions where there’s more black audiences that might interested in Samuel’s twist on the story of Jesus of Nazareth. Granted, releasing this over MLK Jr. may have seemed smart since “black” comedies have done quite well on this weekend – example, the “Ride Along” movies starring Ice Cube and Kevin Hart were huge – but the biblical faith-based aspects of the movie may have made it more of interest back in November or December. Also, let’s not forget that the fourth season of “The Chosen” will be released during scattered weeks in February for that crowd.

Because of this, “Clarence” probably won’t come close to $10 million over the four-day holiday weekend, so it might struggle to get into the top five against stronger returning movies like “Migration” and “Anyone But You.”

On top of that, Disney will be releasing Pixar Animation’s Oscar-winning animated film, “Soul,” directed by Pete Docter and co-directed by Kemp Powers (“Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse”) into theaters nationwide on Friday, after being hijacked onto Disney+ due to the pandemic. Animation hasn’t been doing that great theatrically in the past year, which is why Disney is trying to turn things around by giving people across the country a chance to see movies that may have become beloved through streaming in theaters. The real question is whether families and parents with kids will return to theaters to see a movie that’s right there on their streaming devices, and that will determine whether “Soul” makes more than $4 to 45 million over the extended weekend.

Also, it’s looking very likely that MGM will expand Cord Jefferson‘s “American Fiction,” starring Jeffrey Wright, much wider this weekend, despite it missing out at the Globes on Sunday. At this time, no actual theater count has been reported, so it could be in anywhere between 300 and 1,000 theaters, because they may want to expand even wider once it (presumably) gets Oscar nominations on January 23.

Check back on Sunday (or possibly Monday) to see how the movies above fared.

SIGN UP for Gold Derby’s free newsletter with latest predictions