It’s Disney/Pixar’s weekend to lose with the third session of Inside Out 2, which is expected to do $55 million-$60 million at the domestic box office — and maybe even more. At the pace it’s going, many believe it will blow past the final domestic of Illumination/Universal’s Super Mario Bros Movie which wound up with $574.9M.
As such, exhibition, and studios overall, have what they’ve been craving since the strikes settled: a full-bodied marketplace. Enter Paramount’s prequel A Quiet Place: Day One, set on the first day when the big-eared, sound-sensitive aliens invaded New York City. Pig director Michael Sarnoski takes over helming from John Krasinski, who directed the first two chapters of the franchise and is producing here. Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o, Joseph Quinn, Djimon Hounsou and Alex Wolff star.
The expectation for Day One is an opening of $40M+, the big swing factor here being walk-up business from Latino and Hispanic moviegoers, a demo that has been providing much fire to the rebounding box office. Diversity demos are strong as well as the under 35 demo on the PG-13 genre movie, which is booked at 3,700 locations. Previews start Thursday at 3 p.m.
Previous openings for A Quiet Place 1 and 2 respectively were $50.2M and $47.5M. The overall global franchise is running at $638.2M. The latest movie is also going out in 59 offshore markets including Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Korea, Mexico, Spain, Taiwan and the UK. No Rotten Tomatoes reviews yet. The world premiere is Wednesday night in New York City.
New Line’s Horizon: An American Saga, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, is a domestic service deal for Warner Bros; Costner is on the hook for the production cost and P&A, and the combined first two movies costing a reported $100M. Movie is tracking for a $10M-$12M start at 3,300 theaters.
Even though that’s not a rich enough amount of cash for a movie that cost $50M, it’s more traffic for cinemas, hence better for the overall ecosystem. This movie is three hours long, compared with A Quiet Place: Day One‘s 1 hour and 40 minutes. The only ones coming to this movie are men over 50. Previews start at 3 p.m.
Coming away from its Cannes world premiere (Warners doesn’t have rights to the Western in France), the movie, which follows the 15-year span of pre- and post-Civil War expansion and settlement of the American West, has a 47% Rotten rating with film reviewers. Hopefully Yellowstone audiences in the flyover states realize that if they want to watch Costner going forward on a horse and with a pistol and a hat, they’ll have to head to the cinema.