Ballerina Dominika Egorova is recruited to 'Sparrow School' a Russian intelligence service where she is forced to use her body as a weapon. But her first mission, targeting a CIA agent, threatens to unravel the security of both nations.
Photo by Photo credit: Peter Mountain - © 2018 Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved.
Warner Bros./Time Warner Inc. opened Game Night yesterday as well, earning an okay $5.6 million on Friday, including $1m in Thursday previews. This ensemble comedy got a boost right at the last minute from rather positive reviews, which is something of a rarity for a major studio comedy these days. And we critics are right. It milks a good premise (a game night among friends becomes a real-world mystery thriller) and a strong cast (Jason Bateman, Rachel McAdams, Kyle Chandler, Sharon Horgan, Billy Magnussen, Lamorne Morris, Kyle Bunbury and Jesse Plemons) for a good time at the movies.
If it plays like a conventional adult-skewing comedy, we’re looking at a Fri-Sun frame of around $15 million. That would be a decent start for the $37m-budgeted New Line flick, and a promising sign that the House That Freddy Built can still open movies outside of the horror genre. The film earned a B+ from CinemaScore and played 70% over-35 years old. It also played 56% female. Women gave the film an A- while men and women under-25 gave it an A rating.
WB clearly likes what they got from directors John Francis Daley Jonathan Goldstein since they snatched them up to direct their long-gestating The Flash movie. Maybe the third time is the charm for that seemingly doomed project. As for Game Night, it's very funny and the kids giving it an A grade have the right idea.
Paramount/Viacom Inc. sold off most of the international distribution rights for Alex Garland’s Annihilation to Netflix a few months ago. To the extent that they got much of their $40 million budget back, Paramount and Skydance are on the hook for domestic distribution. Oddly enough, Alex Garland’s acclaimed but unapologetically challenging sci-fi horror freak-out is the sort of movie that can do better overseas than in North America. mother! got sacked in North America ($17m) but earned $27m overseas, while Arrival earned 50/50 in late 2016/early 2017 for a $203m worldwide total on a $47m budget.
With negative test screening results, a director who had “final cut,” and an uncertain theatrical landscape for this sort of fare, I understand the desire to cut losses and avoid another high profile box office whiff. Even with a cast made up of Natalie Portman, Tessa Thompson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tuva Novotny, Gina Rodriguez and Oscar Isaac and rave reviews, I’d argue Annihilation is playing in US theaters is for image-related reasons. It’s not exactly becoming of a once-grand movie studio, one that has been struggling for the last two years, to shuffle a movie like Annihilation onto Netflix while they slot a Sonic the Hedgehog movie for summer 2019.
Since the movie is much better than Cloverfield Paradox, they let Netflix take the Bad Robot prequel whole-hog and kept at least domestic theatrical for the sci-fi flick. The notion of studios partnering with Netflix to lessen risk may actually be a net-positive, even if it further lets the streaming giant into the proverbial henhouse. But much of the chat around the movie has been about the Netflix deal and an odd whitewashing controversy (Natalie Portman’s character is Asian in the book, but you don’t find that out until the sequel which wasn’t in print when Garland was adapting the first novel).
Annihilation opened yesterday with just $3.8 million on Friday in 2,012 theaters, including $900,000 in Thursday previews. That’s lower than Sony’s R-rated Life ($4.4m) in March of 2017, which eventually lead to a $12.5m debut weekend. Depending on legs and audience polling (that this arty chiller earned a "C" instead of an "F" from CinemaScore is a credit to American moviegoers), we’re either looking at a weekend like Chappie ($4.5m/$13.3m) or Transcendence ($4.8m/$10.8m). So expect an $11m Fri-Sun frame.
That’s not terribly promising, especially with Red Sparrow opening next weekend to provide additional adult-skewing, female-led, R-rated thrills. Depending on the breaks, we’re probably looking at a $20-$25 million domestic total. As tempting as it would be to blame Paramount, there was a time not so long ago when adults saw movies like Annihilation, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot or Jack Reacher: Never Go Back in theaters while their kids saw the kid-friendly tentpoles. Or maybe, once upon a time, adults found time to see both in theaters.
Orion is back as a stand-alone distribution studio, and their first offering is Every Day. The under-$5 million romantic drama, based on a YA novel about an entity who wakes up every morning to find himself in a different body and the young woman who loves him no matter what, debuted on 1,625 theaters with just $1.077m on Friday, including a $115k Thursday preview figure. Marketing was relatively frugal and targeted for this one, so all parties claim they will be happy with the projected $3m debut weekend.
To be fair, I was a little hard on Roadside Attractions’ Forever My Girl last month, only to watch that $3.5m romantic drama leg it to $15.7m from a $4.4m debut weekend. Every Day stars Angourie Rice (The Nice Guys) and a whole host of young men and women as the “hosts” of this body-jumping love interest. I meant to see the film yesterday, but life got in the way so I may catch up on Monday.
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With directors John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein’s very funny new movie Game Night now in theaters, we’ve been provided with an alternate movie poster for the film to share with our readers. If you didn’t know, when a studio is coming up with their marketing plan, they design a myriad of options for the movie poster and usually the versions that aren’t used are never seen again. Over the years, I’ve seen tons of cool alternate movie posters and when I saw this one I thought it would be cool to share.
Like I’ve been saying on the site again and again, I thought Game Night was extremely funny and it had me laughing from beginning to end. And if you thought maybe it’s just me, a few nights ago we held a special early screening of the film at ArcLight Cinemas Hollywood as part of the Collider screening series and it played like the crowd was on laughing gas. Trust me, see this in a crowded theater and you’ll have a great time.
If you haven’t seen the trailers (which, thankfully, don’t spoil all the jokes or twists and turns), the film stars Jason Bateman and Rachel McAdams as a couple whose weekly game night gets kicked up a couple thousand notches when Bateman’s brother (played by Kyle Chandler) arranges a murder mystery party that quickly gets out of hand. Think of Game Night as a comedic version of David Fincher’s The Game. The film also stars Billy Magnussen, Sharon Horgan, Lamorne Morris, Kylie Bunbury, Chelsea Peretti, Danny Huston, Michael C. Hall and an amazing Jesse Plemons, who plays a police officer that lives next door to Bateman and McAdams.
Check out the alternate Game Night poster below and further down are a few links to some of our recent coverage and the official synopsis. Trust me, if you want to have a good time at the movies this weekend go see Game Night.
Bateman and McAdams star as Max and Annie, whose weekly couples game night gets kicked up a notch when Max's charismatic brother, Brooks (Chandler), arranges a murder mystery party, complete with fake thugs and faux federal agents. So when Brooks gets kidnapped, it's all part of the game - right? But as the six uber-competitive gamers set out to solve the case and win, they begin to discover that neither this game - nor Brooks - are what they seem to be. Over the course of one chaotic night, the friends find themselves increasingly in over their heads as each twist leads to another unexpected turn. With no rules, no points, and no idea who all the players are, this could turn out to be the most fun they've ever had... or game over.
