By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com
Friday Estimates by Out Getting Klady
You gotta love Universal’s sense of humor, putting Get Out on Oscar weekend. The story of a smart, attractive black guy being brought home to the white liberal family in the suburbs could be a metaphor for Moonlight at The Oscars. I won’t extend the metaphor as to avoid spoilers for the movie). You should see it if you like “The Twilight Zone,” and you shouldn’t let anyone tell you anything about it.
Saturday will tell us whether audiences are seeing the film as a horror movie or a date movie and whether the excellent Friday was driven by “the urban audience” or a broader swath of the nation. I would be happy to see this become Universal’s second breakout thrill-horror film of 2017, a reminder that you can make a lot of money playing to all fields. And on top of that, that the studio would have been throwing away many millions with a day-n-date VODing either of these movies.
John Wick: Chapter 2 will pass $100m worldwide today with a fair amount of gas left in the tank. This Wick will be pretty profitable, though not as much as the original. The upgrade in 2 was adding Morpheus to Neo’s violent journey. Hard to say whether Mr. Fishburne drove much box office or if this was the post-theatrical strength of the film showing up for the sequel. The frustration for Lionsgate is that it didn’t work better. So the challenge of a “Wick 3” will be to figure out how to get a wider audience out. I don’t know that there is an answer. Some ideas have a natural cap, no matter how hard the core and how much the critics buy in. But the box office explosion of the Fast & Furious franchise continues to be a siren song for many smart producers and studios. If Logan does strong business, expect John Wick to have a young daughter next time.
The Weinstein Company continues to successfully nurse the Lion box office. Another 260 screens this weekend after adding 205 last weekend. One has to figure, with the film growing in Weekend 14 that the adult audience is slowly finding this mouth and giving it strong word of mouth. Very patient play by TWC. Obviously, Oscar helps. But it’s more than just that.
Two wide releases crashed this weekend, Rock Dog and Collide. Lionsgate will just have to take solace in their Oscar win tomorrow night and Open Road will have to remember the glow of winning last year. They’re still here.
The limited/exclusive hit of the weekend is My Life As A Zucchini, which should be over $10k per screen for the weekend. A lovely, very French, stop-motion animation about an orphan who builds a family over time deserves a good audience… the kind of movie you wonder if your kids will like and then find they love it.
I don’t think Lionsgate has much exposure at all on these Chinese/Euro animated pickups, do they? Regardless, they now feel out of place in a new Lionsgate that finally seems to be moving out of the YA/hard horror/Tyler Perry ghetto by investing in prestige fare (Hacksaw, La La, WahlhbergBerg), carefully cultivated internal franchises (Power Rangers, My Little Pony), big studio stuff (the DiCaprio produced Robin Hood, Wonder, Liam Neeson back in action mode) and next week, their first ever faith-based release.
They havent quiiiite escaped yet, with SAW 8 this fall, but they’re finally coming along.
Clearly Open Road had no interest in opening “Collide.” I never once saw an in-theater trailer.
Not sure why they even bothered (was it a contractual thing?). Should have gone straight to DVD.
24 hours after opening and there still aren’t any NYT or Variety reviews posted online.
Pitiful. (And the movie stinks, too.)
Get Out Spoilers
Get Out is pretty great. The first hour or so is outstanding. Peele establishes and sustains an incredibly eerie and tense mood. Kaluuya is excellent and I love his reactions. The reveal is sinister and messed up (even as it’s totally obvious that Rose is bad), but initially I wasn’t sure about the ending. It felt a little too easy and familiar. Last-second miraculous escape before killing everyone and making it out alive. But then I realized (and I know this isn’t a deep thought or anything) that I just saw a black male hero brutally kill a bunch of white people in a horror movie. How often does that happen? That’s pretty damn subversive. I liked it a lot but it’s grown on me since I saw it yesterday and I would definitely like to see it again.
I was surprised to see Collide opening this weekend as it felt like I first read about it ages ago. Sure enough it completed filming in 2014.
I was impressed at how remarkably well-sustained “Get Out” is, S.B.; certainly in comparison w/ something like last weekend’s “Cure for Wellness” which completely falls apart in the third act.
A very impressive, terrifically assured first film by Jordan Peele, and Keener is typically awesome. Her performance deserves to be remembered at awards time just like John Goodman in “10 Cloverfield Lane” last year. (Yeah, that didn’t happen, and it likely won’t happen w/ Keener either.)
My only real “Out” complaint was Caleb Landry Jones’ truly awful performance. He seemed to be imitating the “Kalifornia”-era Brad Pitt. (Maybe it’s the name, but I’d always assumed Landry-Jones was a Brit. Shocked to learn that he’s actually from TX. )