Box Office: Three New Movies Slink Into Theaters, With Limited Expectations

The upcoming movie Amsterdam has a star-studded cast and 20th Century Studios has shared 15 character posters featuring all of the big names!

SATURDAY AM UPDATE: With the exit of New Line’s adaptation of Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot in what has been a lucrative post Labor Day weekend pre-pandemic, Disney swooped in and booked its 20th Century Studios horror title Barbarian. That pic, directed and written by Zach Cregger, follows a woman staying at an Airbnb, who discovers that the house she has rented is not what it seems. The movie grossed $3.8M on Friday (including $850K Thursday night previews) and is poised to make around $9M, possibly double digits.

Broadway gave Billy Crystal a fine send-off last week, with the star’s Mr. Saturday Night musical grossing more than $1 million during its final week of performances. That number – $1,014,614, to be precise – is a big jump over the show’s weekly box office takes in recent months. About 98% of seats at the Nederlander Theatre were filled for Crystal’s goodbye week.

George Clooney and Julia Roberts are opening up about their experience working on the set of their upcoming film ‘Ticket to Paradise,’ revealing that they had a lot of fun shooting some of the scenes and even took their time to perfect their on-screen kiss.During a recent interview with The New York Times, the Hollywood stars explained that while filming one of the scenes, where the two characters are reunited and share an emotional kiss, they had to do many takes.“Yeah. I told my wife, ‘It took 80 takes,’ ” the actor said about his wife’s reaction.

box office, there is a near-term question mark about what will happen next: Will recovery stall due to a paucity of Hollywood tentpole movies? Or will international theatrical decouple and find new drivers to maintain the momentum? The good news is that most of the international market’s top territories are now fully open and operating without significant restrictions on seating capacity. These include the U.K. and Ireland, Japan, France, Germany, Spain, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico and Brazil. The smaller number of territories still laboring under restrictions nevertheless include some valuable ones: China, Turkey, Argentina, Hong Kong and Russia.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent The Italian film industry is in a paradoxical state: production is booming but box office is bust. Italy’s five features vying for a Venice Golden Lion – plus a myriad more scattered in other Lido sections – reflect cinema Italiano’s current creative vibrancy, if you look at the cream of the crop; however, the average quality is not that great. On the plus side, the country is making a quantum leap forward in terms of the global visibility of its movies just as the number of Italian directors considered bankable in Hollywood, such as Paolo Sorrentino, Luca Guadagnino and Stefano Sollima (“Without Remorse”), to name but a few, is growing.

Nick Vivarelli International Correspondent The Italian film industry is in a paradoxical state: production is booming but box office is bust. Italy’s five features vying for a Venice Golden Lion – plus a myriad more scattered in other Lido sections – reflect cinema Italiano’s current creative vibrancy, if you look at the cream of the crop; however, the average quality is not that great. On the plus side, the country is making a quantum leap forward in terms of the global visibility of its movies just as the number of Italian directors considered bankable in Hollywood, such as Paolo Sorrentino, Luca Guadagnino and Stefano Sollima (“Without Remorse”), to name but a few, is growing.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter Will Spider-Man be able to save the box office… again? Yes, you’re reading this in August of 2022. And yes, there’s actually a chance that “Spider-Man: No Way Home” will return to the No. 1 spot on domestic box office charts… roughly eight months after the superhero adventure swooped into cinemas and revived the theater industry. Sony is re-releasing the film — which has already grossed an astounding $804 million in North America and $1.9 billion globally — in 3,850+ theaters over Labor Day weekend, this time with a glorious 11 minutes of extra footage. Thank you, Peter Parker! How, pray tell, is it possible that last December’s release “Spider-Man: No Way Home” could end up presiding over domestic box office charts in the final stretch of summer? Well, it’s not that surprising if you consider the reality that studios have all but abandoned the big screen in August after ticket sales rebounded at the start of popcorn season. In the past few weeks, the moviegoing landscape has taken a drastic turn from dreary to downright desolate.

Brent Lang Executive Editor of Film and Media After Warner Bros. executives signed off on the risky decision to bankroll their $90 million look at the life of Elvis Presley with a little-known actor portraying the hip-swinging rocker, producer Gail Berman reached for her phone. She wanted to immortalize the moment for Austin Butler, the man who reportedly beat out the likes of Ansel Elgort and Miles Teller to land the kind of role that can make a career. “I needed to take a photo of all these people sitting around after they made a decision that was going to mark a major change in Austin’s life,” says Berman. “It was wonderful that they saw from his screen test just how good he was, and that they were ready to support him on this journey.”

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau Chief Chinese animation film “New Gods: Yang Jian” was the top film at the mainland China box office for the second successive weekend. Unchallenged by major new releases, the film earned $13.0 (RMB88.3 million) between Friday and Sunday, according to data from consultancy firm Artisan Gateway. That was a drop of 34% compared with its $19.8 million opening session. Some $1.5 million of the weekend total was scored from the film’s outing on Imax screens. After ten days on release “Yang Jian” has a cumulative total of $43.7 million (RMB297 million). Of that, its Imax total is now $4 million.

A glum weekend box office overall (one of the worst of the year) wasn’t so awful for specialty, relatively speaking, with Breaking passing $1M on 900 screens and Spanish-language The Good Boss at $27K on 15. Both are a far cry from pre-pandemic numbers but did hit the new normal for limited releases – reaching at least $1 million on 500 to 1,000 screens, and keeping the per theater average above three digits.

J. Kim Murphy In a summer that’s often seen only one new wide release in a weekend, a whopping three new films hit theaters on Friday: Sony’s horror-thriller “The Invitation,” George Miller’s “Three Thousand Years of Longing” and bank heist movie “Breaking,” starring John Boyega. However, none of them seem to be making much of an impact, as the total box office projects a sum in the $50 million to $60 million range. That wouldn’t just be the worst weekend of the summer, but also the worst since February. “The Invitation” is tracking ahead of the other two, as it looks to claim the weekend’s top spot with a meagre $6 million to $7 million gross from 3,114 locations in its opening. Critics didn’t really care for the movie — it landed a 40% approval rating from review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes — and audiences were perhaps more unenthused. The film holds a “C” grade from research firm Cinema Score, indicating a rather snoozy reception from general consumers.

Parks and Recreation actress Aubrey Plaza has found her next starring role in Hollywood legend Francis Ford Coppola's new movie Megalopolis. The highly-anticipated project is independently financed by Coppola from his own script and will follow an architect trying to rebuild New York City as his idealistic utopia in the wake of a tragic disaster. Deadline reports it is unclear precisely what role Plaza will play in the movie, but she joins a star-studded cast that includes Adam Driver, Forest Whitaker, Nathalie Emmanuel, Jon Voight and Laurence Fishburne.

Wise men say only fools predict that adult films don’t work at the pandemic box office, however, older moviegoers kept falling in love with Warner Bros.’ Elvis this summer to the point where it’s now director Baz Luhrmann’s highest grossing movie ever of his career in U.S./Canada with $144.851M, beating the original run of his 2013 title, The Great Gatsby, which made $144.84M.

Patrick Frater Asia Bureau ChiefChinese animation film “New Gods: Yang Jian” was the top film at the mainland China box office over the latest weekend. “Minions: The Rise of Gru” opened in third place.“New Gods: Yang Jian” earned 19.8 million (RMB134 million) on its debut between Friday and Sunday, according to data from consultancy Artisan Gateway. It places ahead of previous winner “Moon Man” which slipped from first to second place with a $17.8 million (RMB121 million) fourth weekend.

The Picturehouse release of National Geographic Documentary Films  The Territory grossed a solid $26.4K in six markets (eight screens) for a PSA of $3,308 with its climate change message attracting a broader than typical age range for a theatrical doc, especially lately, according to Picturehouse CEO Bob Berney.

Anthony Joshua and Oleksandr Usyk meet on Saturday night in a repeat of their heavyweight world title clash from September 2021.

Amandla Stenberg has been stirring up controversy due to a DM she sent to a film critic who wrote that her new horror flick “doubles as a 95-minute advertisement for cleavage.”

Zack Sharf Jonah Hill has released an open letter in which he announced that he will no longer promote his own movies for the foreseeable future in order to continue working on his mental health. Hill’s upcoming projects include a new documentary he directed titled “Sputz” and Netflix’s comedy movie “You People,” which Hill co-wrote with director Kenya Barris.

Two wide studio releases will hopefully prevent this summer from reaching another low at the box office after last weekend’s $67.3M. If there’s one movie that’s going to pull ahead, sources are betting on Crunchyroll’s Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero. That distributor has proven in a short amount of time that they can draw a great deal of anime fans in a Friday through Sunday span. The Tetsuro Kodama directed animation movie is looking at anywhere from $12M-$15M, ahead of Universal’s genre lion-stalking film, Beast, starring Idris Elba; that pic hoping for at least double digits.