It’s Super Bowl weekend, or as your favorite beer, chips and wings advertiser and gutless local TV sports anchor calls it the weekend of the “Big Game/”
Speaking from experience, this is the best weekend of the year to A) fly somewhere or B) go to the movies. Jetliners are at half-capacity, typically. And the cinemas are largely empty.
That’s particularly true this year as no brilliant, crowd-drawing new offerings are being released to counter-program against Concussion Bowl LX.
“Send Help,” a survivalist working class vengeance horror comedy that’s a winner for director Sam Raimi and Rachel McAdams, will dominate the light turnout with a $10 million weekend, based on Friday’s projections. Deadline.com is projecting $10 million, but figure somewhere in the $9-$12 range for sure.
Faith-based Angel Studios tries its hand at a chaste, profanity-free (if not exactly “faith based”) rom-com with the Kevin James stood-up-at-the-altar-in-Italy dud “Solo Mio.” It will clear $7 million based on Thursday night and Friday’s take, maybe clearing $8 million if Saturday does well enough. James teamed up with a whole Rhode Island family of filmmakers for this one, and all those Kinnanes wouldn’t know a reliable laugh if it bit any one of them in the bum.
There’s a K-pop group concert film from Bleecker Street, “Stray Kidz: The dominATE Experience,” which did well Thursday night and Friday and should clear $5 million, taking third place. Are they a big deal with Gen Z or Gen Alpha? Or is this the low turnout the product of Bleecker Street’s limited screens and invisible marketing?
The French made, American and pan-European cast “Dracula” from action auteur Luc Besson is a lush and bloody take on an overtold tale. But even though Caleb Landry Jones isn’t box office and the supporting cast of Euro-lovelies are mostly unknown — save for Christoph Waltz — it may clear $5 million or fall a little shy of that.
The video game adaptation “Iron Lung” will battle Lionsgate’s latest “The Strangers” horror installment, “The Strangers 3,” for the final spot in the Top Five. “Strangers 3” is more senseless slaughter, we trust, as we’re not going to see that. That’s the royal “we” as in I won’t be bothered, and neither will the once-reliable horror crowd, which stayed home Thursday night and Friday and it might clear $4. Terrible reviews won’t help.
The Jeff Bezos bribe money abortion “Melania” is on track to earn another $3.5 million from Hix in the Stix. Scathing reviews, followed by mass layoffs at the Bezos newspaper, The Washington Post, with director Brett Ratner, Melania and her tiny-fingered husband all over the Epstein child sex trafficking and perhaps snuff film ring files. But surely the bald runt who financed it — the name Bezos is in the latest dump of files 194 times –– figures it’s worth it.
