THE WEEKEND WARRIOR Early Edition February 7, 2025

LOVE HURTS, HEART EYES, BECOMING LED ZEPPELIN

This is likely to be another quieter weekend for Ye Olde Weekend Warrior since he has jury duty starting Tuesday, he’s still wrapping up Sundance coverage, AND he seems to have taken to talking about himself in the third person. George is getting very angry!

(Incidentally, I have a bunch of reviews coming out of Sundance, including my first batch over at Cinema Daily US.)

Because I have no idea how much I’ll have time to watch or review this week, I’m giving out this week’s Early Edition to ALL subscribers once again, because I’m just that kind of guy. Next week’s box office analysis for Captain America: Brave New World and Paddington in Peru? That goes back behind the paywall, so if you’ve already used up your free view, it’s a good time to pay the measly $5 to keep reading my box office thoughts.

This weekend might be mostly about the Super Bowl on Sunday when the two-time champs Kansas City Chiefs take on the Philadelphia Eagles, who have won exactly once and are having a rematch after losing to the Chiefs two years ago. That seems like it will be a very big game to watch, and I’m sure some people will want to see Kendrick Lamar’s half-time show as well. Me? I’ll probably be at a movie on Sunday night as I have no interest in either.

Either way, we can expect both of the weekend movies to be frontloaded, not that it matters anymore since both of them will also be opening for 2pm previews on Thursday to counter balance any loss of business from the Super Bowl.

LOVE HURTS (Universal)

Everything Everywhere All At Once’s Oscar-winning star Ke Huy Quan made a huge comeback a few years back after being best known as a child actor in movies like The Goonies and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom way back in the mid-80s. Although he’s been acting since his Oscar win, it’s mainly been in animation like last year’s Kung Fu Panda 4 and television series like “American Born Chinese” and Marvel’s “Loki.” In this one, he plays a realtor who has left a life of crime behind but gets dragged back into it when his crime-lord brother (Daniel Wu) finds him.

This new action movie directed by stunt guy Jonathan Eusebio, the fight coordinator for last year’s The Fall Guy, co-stars fellow Oscar winner, Ariana Grande, as well as Mustafa Shakir, Cam Gigandet, former football player Marshawn Lynch, Rhys Darby, and Sean Astin. It’s a pretty decent ensemble cast but Quan is front and center, following up on his Oscar narrative of having one of the greatest comebacks since Robert Downey Jr. There’s also the nostalgia factor from those who loved him in those ‘80s movies, and yes, having an Asian-American front and center hopefully will get other Asians into theaters.

Last year, Universal released Dev Patel’s action movie, Monkey Man, in early April, which opened with $10.1 million and grossed $25.1 million, which isn’t bad considering how less active Patel had been in recent years. Love Hurts also falls in line with another Universal release putting an unlikely character into an action role, Nobody, starring Bob Odenkick, which didn’t do as well, but it also was released at the height of the COVID pandemic in March 2021. It still made $57.5 million worldwide, and it’s getting a sequel this summer.

There was a time when action did very well in theaters, and this year, we’ve already gotten Den of Thieves: Pantera and Flight Risk opening with $15 and $11.5 million respectively, which isn’t terrible. In theory, Love Hurts could do that with the added bonus of its love story premise right before Valentine’s Day, but make no mistake that Quan is not a proven box office commodity like Gerard Butler or Mark Wahlberg.

The fact that Universal isn’t screening the movie for critics until Wednesday night is somewhat worrisome, because maybe they don’t have confidence in critics appreciating the movie, but marketing has been strong, so there’s a good chance it can make between $9 and $11 million as counterprogramming to Universal’s animated release, Dog Man.

HEART EYES (Sony/Screen Gems)

One thing that’s going to be competing directly against Love Hurts and also having to contend with the Super Bowl on Sunday is this new horror-comedy directed by Josh Ruben (Werewolves Within) and written/produced by Christopher Landon (Happy Death Day, Freaky), two filmmakers who really know horror and really know comedy. The movie stars Olivia Holt (Cloak and Dagger) and Mason Gooding (Scream) as a couple who have a Seattle coffee shop meet cute just as the city is being plagued by the Heart Eyes Killler (HEK) who has been killing couples on Valentine’s Day.

The high-concept slasher film also stars Dewon Sawa and Jordana Brewster as detectives on the case and both actors have done their share of popular horror films, so they can help entice horror fans into theaters.

One of the big thing working against the movie is that the marketing makes it look like a straight-up slasher movie ala The Strangers or Friday the 13th, and it’s not that at all, even though that’s a big element. I already reviewed the movie and overall, reviews have generally been positive, so maybe that will get more people interested, though being released so closely to Companion and just ahead of The Monkey might hurt it. It also might have trouble getting any sort of legs with Captain America: Brave New World opening next weekend.

It’s hard to figure out what recent movies would be a good comparison though last year’s Strangers: Chapter 1 remake opened with $11.8 million showing strength in the horror subgenre. Horror in general had been doing pretty well until this year’s Wolf Man, which has barely made it to $20 million, so that’s kind of worrying.

Opening in less than 3,000 theaters, Heart Eyes may open with $8 or $9 million unless interest really picks up by Friday, so it’s looking for a third place opening at best.

BECOMING LED ZEPPELIN (Sony Pictures Classics)

Opening in an unknown number of IMAX theaters on Thursday with advance sneaks on Wednesday is this self-explanatory documentary directed by Bernard MacMahon, which covers the years before Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and John Bonham united to form one of the biggest rock bands of the ‘70s. This is going to be a good experiment for the documentary genre, which has never done particularly well theatrically, but having it only on IMAX screens for a week before a limited release on Feb. 14 makes it a great event movie for the millions of American fans. We’ll have to see if it fares as well as the 2022 David Bowie doc, Moonage Daydream, which opened in 170 theaters (including IMAX) to $1.2 million, just getting into the Top 10, before expanding to 733 theaters and ultimately making $4.3 million domestically and another $9.6 million overseas. Clearly, this would be the ideal model for this doc that first appeared at the Venice Film Festival in 2021 as a “work in progress” that got mixed reviews, and while I’m not allowed to review it at this moment, hopefully I’ll be able to say more about it on Friday. But yeah, this movie’s release has been a disaster and the lack of marketing and interviews with the band will not help.

Sony Classics might also use this weekend to expand Walter Salles’ I’m Still Here nationwide after its surprise Best Picture Oscar nomination last month, and depending on how many theaters it expands will determine whether it breaks into the top 10 and with how much. While foreign language films don’t always do well in all parts of the country, there certain will be more interest in it now than when it was release three weeks back, and it’s already made $1 million domestically before its wide expansion. It still has a long way to go before it supercedes the 2003 Brazilian hit City of God, which grossed $7.5 million and is still Brazil’s biggest movie in North America.

THE BOX OFFICE CHART

It’s been a long time that I’ve been so divided between two movies and which one could take the lead and second place to Dog Man this weekend. In theory, either movie could open over $100 million, but being Super Bowl weekend, they’re likely to both plummet on Sunday, more than usual. Love Hurts has an advantage of 500 more theaters and a couple bigger name stars and maybe even a better title, but Horror Eyes is a well-reviewed horror movie with a lot more support. I’ve gone back and forth on these two, but I’m going to say Love Hurts wins though neither opens with more than $10 million, and it will be close. Horror Eyes is likely to do better on Valentine’s Day in its second Friday due to the V-Day connections. Without having an actual theater count, it’s hard to tell if Becoming Led Zeppelin might break into the Top 10, but Sony Pictures Classics’ I’m Still Here has a much stronger chance depending on how wide it expands.

1. Dog Man (DreamWorks Animation/Universal) - $19.5 million -46%
2. Love Hurts (Universal) - $9.6 million N/A
3. Heart Eyes (Sony/Screen Gems) - $8.7 million N/A
4. Companion (New Line/WB) - $5.1 million -47%
5. Mufasa: The Lion King (Disney) - $4.4 million -30%
6. One of Them Days (Sony) - $4 million -32%
7. Flight Risk (Lionsgate) - $2.9 million -47%
8. Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (Paramount) - $1.8 million -45%
9. A Complete Unknown (Searchlight) - $1.7 million -25%
10. I’m Still Here (Sony Pictures Classics) - $1.4 million
— Becoming Led Zeppelin (Sony Pictures Classics) - $1 million N/A

Also this weekend, MUBI is releasing Bring Them Down, the directorial debut by Christopher Andrews, starring Christopher Abbott and Barry Keoghan, playing members of feuding neighbors in rural Ireland. I haven’t seen it yet, but it sounds a like Martin McDonagh’s Banshees of Inisherin. A24 will be releasing Parthenope, the new film from Italian filmmaker Paolo Sorrentino, into select cities this weekend, as well.

On Tuesday, I head into jury duty and not sure how much more writing I’ll have a chance to get to, but I might try to review Love Hurts and write a few more reviews, plus I also have some more reviews from Sundance, so we’ll see how that all goes.