‘The Northman’ $1.4M, ‘Bad Guys’ $1.1M, ‘Unbearable Weight Of Massive Talent’ $835K – Thursday Night Box Office Previews

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media ReporterHollywood is often skewered for no longer making large-scale original epics like “The Northman,” director Robert Eggers’ bloody Viking tale about a warrior’s quest to avenge his father’s death.Yet Focus Features, Universal’s indie label, took a gamble, not only backing “The Northman” but releasing the film in theaters nationwide. Driven by positive reviews, the movie generated $12 million from 3,865 North American theaters over the weekend, enough to secure the No. 4 spot on domestic box office charts.

health of family moviegoing is especially good news for Hollywood as it heads into its lucrative summer season when films like Universal's own “Minions: Rise of Gru” and Walt Disney Co.'s “Lightyear” — the first Pixar film opening in theaters in two years — hope to approach pre-pandemic levels.“There's reason for being more than cautiously optimistic,” said Jim Orr, head of distribution for Universal. “I think audiences this summer are going to be flooding into theaters.”While studios have been hesitant to program many films against each other during the pandemic, the weekend saw a rarity: three new wide releases, all of them well-received, none of them sequels or remakes.“The Bad Guys,” based on Aaron Blabey's children's graphic novel series about a gang of crooked animals with a Quentin Tarantino-for-kids tone, fared well with critics (85% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) and audiences (an “A” CinemaScore).

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic“The Northman,” a violent epic of Viking revenge, is not a good movie. It’s like “Gladiator” without the Colosseum and with a stubbornly uninteresting hulk avenger hero. (It also drags on 45 minutes longer than it should have.) A lot of critics have overpraised the movie because they feel invested in the career of Robert Eggers, the maverick indie director who made the spectral Puritan horror film “The Witch” (2015) and the even more impressive two-men-in-a-lighthouse gaga period fever dream “The Lighthouse” (2019).

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media ReporterUniversal’s kid-friendly caper “The Bad Guys” pulled off a heist for the ages, capturing the No. 1 spot at the domestic box office.The animated comedy has collected $24 million from 4,009 North American theaters in its debut, enough to take the crown from “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore.” In its second weekend of release, the latest chapter in the “Harry Potter” prequel series plummeted to third place with $14 million, a troubling sign for the Warner Bros.’ Wizarding film franchise.“The Bad Guys” may have towered over the competition, but it was not the only newcomer to movie theater marquees.

EXCLUSIVE: ICM has just signed The Northman actor Gustav Lindh.

Brent Lang Executive Editor of Film and Media“The Northman,” a blood-drenched viking epic from director Robert Eggers, pillaged $1.35 million in Thursday previews, while “The Bad Guys,” a kid-friendly spin on the heist genre, earned $1.15.Those aren’t the only new wide releases in town; they will also have to fend off “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent,” a very meta exercise in which Nicolas Cage stars as himself. It picked up $835,000 in Thursday previews.Universal’s indie label Focus released “The Northman,” which is projected to earn $10 million to $15 million in its first three days of release.

“The Northman,” Focus Features’ Viking revenge epic from acclaimed director Robert Eggers, made $1.35 million in its Thursday preview screenings at the box office across 2,700 theaters with previews that began at 7 p.m. “The Northman” opens on 3,214 screens this weekend.Universal’s animated family film “The Bad Guys,” which is expected to lead the box office, made $1.15 million Thursday from preview screenings beginning at 5:00 p.m.

The Northman (★★★☆☆) unfolds like the sort of epic that Viking warriors might have passed down for generations, sharing over horns of ale around a roaring fire: the haunting Legend of Prince Amleth.The exiled prince’s trials and adventures appear to have been shot by firelight, too. Writer-director Robert Eggers and his Oscar-nominated Lighthouse cinematographer Jarin Blaschke opt for enveloping the action in shadows and mist, the natural darkness of a northern land where winter nights are long, and the days short.Even the film’s climactic showdown, a naked sword fight by a lake of lava and fire, is depicted as a brutal clash between silhouettes backlit by flames.Rivals dueling on an erupting volcano forms a gorgeous tableau, but audiences might, for various reasons, wish they could actually see more of the combatants swinging their swords — especially the ferocious Amleth, embodied heartily by Alexander Skarsgård.The erstwhile Tarzan delivers a gruelingly physical performance, fighting, running, lifting, swimming, hauling, speaking primarily and most clearly through Amleth’s vivid body language.

A.D. Amorosi Without a doubt, Robert Eggers’ “The Northman” traffics in his now-usual brand of haunted atmospherics and wonky mysticism, a signature whose intensity is upped by the savage bloodlust of its characters and the vastitudes of his first big-budget epic with a price tag reportedly hovering between $70 million and $90 million.The only thing more intensely stressed than the dilemma of a Viking prince in the year 895 (avenging the death of his father, the king, at the hands of his jealous uncle who stole the prince’s mother as the spoils of war — or did she go willingly?) played to brutal, muscular perfection by Alexander Skarsgård, is the all-consuming dedication of its tactile production design, its brooding, cinematographic ambiance and the craftsmanship of its furry, hierarchical costuming.

After “The Witch” and “The Lighthouse,” director Robert Eggers brings his passion for meticulous historical recreation and his interest in the (often tortured) psyches of past generations to the violent and epic world of Vikings in “The Northman” (read our review). Unlike actor Alexander Skarsgård, who plays the film’s eponymous hero (read our interview with the actor here), Eggers was never particularly inspired by these ruthless people before the idea for the movie was suggested to him — which only makes his achievement on “The Northman” more impressive.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media ReporterNicolas Cage is back… not that he went anywhere.The actor’s latest movie “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent,” a meta comedy in which he plays a fictionalized version of himself, is one of several films opening nationwide over the weekend. It’ll compete against director Robert Eggers’ Viking epic “The Northman” and Universal and DreamWorks’ animated family film “The Bad Guys,” as well as last weekend’s champion “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore.”Unless ticket sales crash in week two, “The Secrets of Dumbledore,” the third chapter in the “Harry Potter” spinoff series, should retain the domestic box office crown.

Is it truly a marketplace for branded tentpoles and uber low budget fare at the box office as the pandemic eases?

Alexander Skarsgård does not simply play the eponymous man of the North in Robert Eggers’ Viking epic “The Northman” — the Swedish actor essentially knocked the first domino down in the process of turning the project into a reality, convincing Eggers to delve into a history the director previously had no interest in. The result, in ways not completely dissimilar to Eggers’ 2019, somehow pre-lockdown cabin fever freakout “The Lighthouse” is a rousing and maniacal portrait of raging masculinity and hot-blooded violence: in his most physically demanding and biggest film role since 2016’s “The Legend of Tarzan,” Skarsgård tears through villages as a berserker and pursues vengeful retribution on the uncle who tore his family apart.

prince at the dawn of the 10th century. It opens in theaters nationwide Friday.The Viking dream laid dormant for some time, though.

Anya Taylor-Joy and Nicole Kidman are each other’s biggest fans. The stars praised each during the Los Angeles premiere of their film The Northman.

Robert Eggers‘ viking epic “The Northman” in Northern Ireland may not have been the most pleasant experience for the cast and crew due to the brutal weather and dangerous landscape, but the stars of the film wouldn’t have it any other way.“I do not complain ever really,” Anya Taylor-Joy told Variety at the Los Angeles premiere at TCL Chinese Theatre on Monday night. “There was one day when the mud came up to about my knees and it had frozen,” Taylor-Joy said. “I essentially squeaked out a ‘Please can we roll?’ and Robert was like, ‘Oh, Anya is asking if we can roll, we should roll.’ But we did it, it’s in the movie and it looks great.”Taylor-Joy looks back at the shoot fondly despite the hardships.

Naman Ramachandran “The Lost City” and “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore” led the U.K. and Ireland box office over the four-day Easter holiday weekend.Paramount’s “The Lost City,” with a star-studded cast including Sandra Bullock, Channing Tatum, Daniel Radcliffe and Brad Pitt, debuted with £2.7 million ($3.5 million) atop the box office, according to numbers released by Comscore.

Writer/director Robert Eggers returns with his third feature film, “The Northman,” after giving us arresting genre thrillers like “The Witch” and “The Lighthouse.” His new movie takes us 1,000 years into the past with a young Viking prince who witnesses his father’s murder and his kingdom stolen, only to return years later to intact a path of violence and revenge which is based on the original Scandinavian tale that directly influenced “Hamlet.” Focus Features has released a short red band trailer (See below) ahead of “The Northman” swinging into theaters this week, focusing on heroic character Amleth’s brutal journey towards his goal of revenge within this visually stunning setting.

“The Northman” that offers a no-holds-barred look at the R-rated revenge shenanigans that await moviegoers.The film hails from “The Lighthouse” and “The Witch” writer/director Robert Eggers, and is a $90 million R-rated Viking movie. As if that wasn’t a selling point enough, this short red-band trailer offers a closer look at some of the film’s gorier scenes, with a blood-soaked Alexander Skarsgaard using all manner of ways to slice and dice his way through a small village.The story is a simple one: Skarsgard is a young Viking prince seeking to avenge the murder of his father (played by Ethan Hawke).This is the biggest film Eggers has ever made, and he maintained recently that while the larger budget came with more notes from the studio, the finished version of the film is very much his director’s cut.