Box office preview: Labor Day weekend offers 6 new wide releases, including ‘Afraid’
Labor Day weekend has always been hit or miss for movie theaters, and the odds and ends released this weekend do not bode particularly well for the final holiday weekend of the summer. Essentially, this is another weekend where we have one bigger release and a bunch of smaller films, with many arriving into a vague number of theaters nationwide. Read on for Gold Derby’s box office preview.
Opening the widest in 3,000 theaters is the new high-concept horror movie “Afraid” from Sony and Blumhouse, written and directed by Chris Weitz (“About a Boy”) and starring John Cho, Katherine Waterston and Havana Rose Liu (“Bottoms”). It’s about a family selected to test out a Siri-like device called “AIA” which is meant to provide the family with anything it can possibly need … and it won’t let anything get in that family’s way either.
Being so high concept and delivering horror from something so universally familiar and common-place clearly helped 2023’s M3gan became a huge hit, grossing nearly $95 million, but that was released by Blumhouse’s normal distribution partner, Universal. Sony previously released the Blumhouse horror movie based on “Fantasy Island” in 2020, but that got sidelined by the COVID pandemic. Sony kicked off the summer movie season with the Screen Gems high-concept horror film “Tarot,” which only opened with $6.5 million and grossed $18.7 million domestically and that had a similarly soft marketing campaign.
Sony will not be screening this movie in advance for critics, hoping that the most minimal of marketing does the trick, maybe because Labor Day tends to generally be a good time for a horror film like this one. While there’s a good chance “Afraid” can win Friday night, it will then fall behind some of the returning movies to end up in third place behind “Deadpool and Wolverine” and “Alien: Romulus” with somewhere between $9 and $11 million over the four-day weekend.
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After that, things get interesting, since there doesn’t seem like there’s much that can beat “It Ends with Us” for fourth place, though there are a few things possibly vying for fifth.
Dennis Quaid plays Ronald Reagan in the political biopic “Reagan,” released by another brand-new distributor called Showbiz Direct into 2,754 theaters on Friday. Directed by Sean McNamara (“The King’s Daughter”), the movie covers the entire life of the actor who became the country’s 40th President, and it’s being released in the midst of a heated Presidential Election, likely targeting older more conservative moviegoers who might be interested in the subject matter. Co-starring Jon Voight, Mena Suvari and C. Thomas Howell, this might be seen as an Oscar play if released later in the year by a better-known distributor. As things are, this is going to be shooting for $6 million over the four-day weekend, vying for fifth place, but as with anything, it all depends on whether this movie can find the people who may be interested in seeing it.
Opening in roughly 800 theaters is the action-thriller “1992,” starring Tyrese Gibson and the late Ray Liotta, though it was filmed quite a few years ago, so possibly shot before Liotta was in last year’s hit “Cocaine Bear.” Gibson plays an ex-convict trying to protect his teen son on the eve of the 1992 L.A. riots with Liotta also playing a father, but one leading a high-stakes heist on the metal factory where Gibson’s characters works, along with Scott Eastwood as his son. Directed by Ariel Vromen (“Criminal”), it’s a crime-thriller with some strong action that could appeal to black audiences more than other options, which could push it to $3 million or more over the four-day holiday.
Bleecker Street releases its second sci-fi thriller of the year in “Slingshot,” starring Casey Affleck as an astronaut stranded in orbit around one of the moons of Saturn. Directed by Swedish filmmaker Mikael Håfström (“Evil”) and co-starring Lawrence Fishburne, this one hopes to have a similar $3 million opening as Bleecker’s “I.S.S.” back in January, although that opened on its own and didn’t have nearly as much competition as “Slingshot” does. Expect this one to end up closer to the $2.5 million range over the four days, as it’s likely to open in somewhere between 800 and 1,000 theaters.
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We then get to two very different dramas, including “City of Dreams,” written and directed by Mohit Ramchandani, starring newcomer Ari Lopez as Jesus, a young Mexican lad who has dreams of becoming a soccer star, but who instead gets caught up in a child slavery ring, working at a sweat shop where he is horribly abused. Also starring Jason Patric, Samm Levine and Diego Calva, the movie tackles a serious subject a la the breakout summer 2023 hit, “Sound of Freedom,” and it has the backing of a number of celebrities. Again, there is no theater count yet, but if it goes wide into 700 or more theaters, it could bring in $2 to $3 million this weekend.
Luke Wilson and Greg Kinnear star in “You Gotta Believe,” the new sports drama from “12 Mighty Orphans” director Ty Roberts, this one about the Fort Worth, Texas Little League team of misfits that stepped up their game to honor their ailing coach (played by Wilson). This is a strange release from Well Go USA, best known for its Asian genre films, and Roberts’ previous film, also starring Kinnear, went wide in its second weekend into 1,000-plus theaters, but only ended up making $3.7 million domestic total. It’s hard to imagine this might do that much better despite opening wider out of the gate.
Also, Oscar watchers might want to check out Stephen Soucy‘s doc “Merchant Ivory,” which looks at the films produced by Oscar-winner James Ivory and late four-time Oscar nominee Ismail Merchant, whose period dramas were popular favorites for nearly forty years. It will be available in limited release this weekend.
Check back on Monday to see how the above movies fared over Labor Day.
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