It’s Super Bowl weekend, as the Philadelphia Eagles take on the Kansas City Chiefs with pop star Rihanna providing the half-time entertainment. Normally, studios wouldn’t release any prominent new movies on this weekend, since they know they would lose a lot of business to the Super Bowl, regularly the biggest televised event every year. Then again, Tuesday is Valentine’s Day, and there’s a chance that Saturday date night could be a good excuse for couples to see one of this weekend’s two romantic offerings. Read on for Gold Derby’s box office preview.
Coming into the weekend is Channing Tatum’s “Magic Mike’s Last Dance,” who is no stranger to the Super Bowl weekend, having starred in “Dear John” opposite Amanda Seyfried way back in 2010, which launched on Super Bowl weekend to the tune of $30.5 million. Tatum has reteamed with Steven Soderbergh for “Magic Mike’s Last Dance,” but they’ve brought on a secret weapon in Salma Hayek Pinault. In this one, Tatum’s Mike Lane is brought to London by Pinault’s wealthy soon-to-be-divorcée Max to pep up a stale West End play with some of his trademark dance moves.
The previous movie, “Magic Mike XXL,” opened in July 2015 with just $12.9 million, which was down quite a bit from the original “Magic Mike,” which opened with $39.1 million three years earlier. The fact that “Last Dance” isn’t getting a summer release may be a bit daunting, but even more worrying is that Warner Bros. seems to only be releasing the movie into roughly 1,500 or fewer theaters. That is very out-of-character for the studio, although the “Magic Mike” finale was originally going to stream on HBO Max as with many of Soderbergh’s other recent films.
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Tatum had a great 2022 with two relative hits in “Dog” and “The Lost City,” opposite Sandra Bullock, the former making $61.8 million and the latter making $105.3 million domestically. It’s been over five years since Tatum last teamed with Soderbergh for 2017’s “Logan Lucky,” playing the title character in that movie, too, but it tapped out below $28 million.
Ms. Hayek Pinault has also been keeping busy through the pandemic, most recently by providing her voice in DreamWorks Animation’s sequel “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” ($151.2 million gross so far), and in 2021 she starred in Ridley Scott’s “House of Gucci” ($53.8 million), Marvel’s “The Eternals” ($164.9 million), and the sequel “The Hitman’s Wife’s Bodyguard” ($38 million). That’s at the height of a 28-year career that began with Robert Rodriguez’s “Desperado” way back in 1995.
Opening on Super Bowl weekend might hurt the movie’s Sunday, but the commercials for the movie are saying that it opens “this Valentine’s Day weekend,” just to remind anyone who may have forgotten. That could help the movie get a rare bump on Saturday and then another one on Tuesday. For the weekend, we can probably expect an opening between $10 and 12 million, enough for first place, although it could do better if Warners is able to up the theater count before Friday. (Early reviews have not been great, although this movie seems fairly review proof. Those who want to see it will go see it.)
The only other wide release is a 25th Anniversary re-release of James Cameron’s “Titanic” into 1,800 theaters, including 3D screens. The last time “Titanic” received a theatrical release of any kind was in 2017, a rather low-key 20th anniversary rerelease, which paled in comparison to the first release of the 3D version of the movie in 2012. That time, the movie opened with $17.3 million in 2,674 theaters, adding another $58 million to the movie’s domestic gross. “Avatar: The Way of Water” would have already passed “Titanic” if not for that added income from re-releases, which have brought the movie’s domestic gross to $659.3 million.
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Because it’s opening in fewer theaters and with less general interest due to the movie being available in many formats for two-and-a-half decades, this is probably going to open under $10 million, putting it against “Magic Mike” for first place. It also probably won’t come close to the 2012 re-release with Marvel’s “Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania” opening in just one week.
IFC Films is releasing Christopher Smith’s religious horror film “Consecration,” starring Jena Malone and Danny Huston, moderately wide, while Cinedigm is releasing the horror film “The Outwaters” into an unknown number of theaters.
Furthermore, A24 is releasing the crime-drama “Sharper” in New York and L.A. this weekend in advance of its streaming debut on Apple TV+ on Friday, Feb. 17. That doesn’t necessarily mean it will report any box office, but it’s the directorial debut of Benjamin Carron (“The Crown”), starring Julianne Moore, Sebastian Shaw, Briana Middleton and Justice Smith.
Check back on Sunday for the box office recap on how the above did.
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