THE WEEKEND WARRIOR EARLY EDITION 11/15/2024

Red One, A Real Pain

We finally have a lighter week (Hallelujah!) with just one major wide release (which I’ve already reviewed) and a festival favorite movie expanding nationwide (which I’ve ALSO reviewed), but it’s Tuesday, and as promised, I plan to give my subscribers (and eventually paid subscribers) early access to my box office analysis and early predictions. Since I don’t expect to have a lot of movies to review this week (at least not that are getting theatrical releases), I’ll probably just run a “Repertory Roundup” later in the week. In the meantime, let’s get to the wide releases and top 10 predictions.

RED ONE (Amazon MGM)

This weekend’s big release is the new holiday action-comedy starring Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans and directed by Jake Kasdan (the “Jumanji” movies), a holiday movie that cost a LOT of money and so far has only received terrible reviews. JK Simmons plays Santa Claus aka “Red One,” who is kidnapped sending Johnson’s head of North Pole security out to try to find him along with Evans’ hacker. There was a time when I thought that this could make $35 million or more, but since the reviews have proven that the movie is actually bad as the trailer makes it look, I’m lowering my prediction to under $30 million, because there’s just no way of saving this. It also will get slaughtered when Gladiator II and Wicked are released and pretty much take over theaters.

A REAL PAIN (Searchlight Pictures)

Expanding nationwide this weekend into roughly 900 to 950 theaters is Jesse Einsenberg’s second film as a director, this one teaming him with Kieran Culkin from Succession as cousins travelling to Poland for a Holocaust tour. It’s a hilarious and heartfelt movie that’s been winning audiences over since it debuted at Sundance where Searchlight picked it up for a good amount of money. The movie opened in New York and L.A. a couple weekends ago, and so far, it’s grossed $612,861 in a maximum of just 12 theaters. It’s getting quite a big bump in theaters this weekend, but it’s also been running trailers for months now, so it’s likely to make around $3 million by opening in a weekend with so few strong wide releases.

THE BOX OFFICE CHART

1. Red One (Amazon MGM) - $28.8 million N/A
2. Venom: The Last Tango* (Sony) - $10 million -37%
3. The Wild Robot (DreamWorks Animation/Universal) - $5.5 million -20%
4. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (Lionsgate) - $5.2 million -53%
5. Heretic (A24) - $5 million -55%
6. Smile 2 (Paramount) - $3.3 million -35%
7. Conclave (Focus Features) - $3.1 million -25%
8. A Real Pain (Searchlight) - $3 million
9. Anora (Neon) - $1.8 million
10. Here (Sony) - $1.3 million

*Inside joke

There are only two limited releases of note this weekend, neither of which I’ll be reviewing, which are the Indian film ALL WE IMAGINE AS LIGHT  (Sideshow/Janus Films) and the oddball indie, DREAM TEAM (Yellow Veil Pictures) – which will open at the Metrograph, no less. You might begin to notice a few stray oddball reviews on my Substack, although I won’t be sending all of them out via the newsletter. 

I also will be trying to cover this year’s DOC-NYC, which begins on Wednesday and runs for a couple weeks, but I haven’t had a chance to watch much of anything just yet.

Check back later in the week for the “Repertory Roundup” and anything else.