Smile grossed around $217 million worldwide on a $17 million budget.
Planning went underwater quickly for a sequel while the iron was still hot. Deadline reported the sequel will be hitting theaters as soon as next year in 2024.
“Paramount has set Oct. 18, 2024 for the next Smile movie.”
Deadline also adds that original Smile director “Parker Finn is coming back to helm Smile 2.”
While smile may make studio executives grinning from ear to ear at potential profits in 2024, the movie itself was one of the better. Additionally, the roll out of the film that included people creepily posing in baseball games and just smiling for nine innings really helped get the word out in an impressive way.
Can they muster up a entrance into the box office fray as successful as their first go around?
The rumors of a 3 hour FNAF movie are not true.. more like an hour and 50 minutes of fun.
Despite people’s objections the concept was perfect for a film adaptation and we hope it’s as fun as the original game was years ago when it was released..
There has been a lot of pre-release hostility for this movie, even before people see it. Will it be OSCAR worthy or even CHAINSAW AWARD worthy? No! But it does not have to be. If it provides jump scares, tacky humor, a few creepy parts, and something that could be teenage friendly, that is all we need.
The game was a phenom.. the movie won’t be.. But if it captures the right audience, a lot of 12-14 year old kids who played the game as a child will flock to theaters. Of course they need to go with an adult as it is rated R..
BARBIE AND OPPENHEIMER SAVED THE BOX OFFICE THIS SUMMER!
Without them, movies this season may have faced calamity..
“As a seemingly out of reach goal just a couple of months ago, the $4 billion domestic summer season box office has become a reality over Labor Day weekend, reflecting not only a strong lineup of films, but the desire by audiences to embrace the time-honored tradition of going to the movies in the hottest moviegoing season of the year,” says senior Comscore analyst Paul Dergarabedian.
“Barbie” is the highest grossing film of the summer (and the year) with $612 million in North America and $1.36 billion globally to date. “Oppenheimer” also wildly outperformed expectations with $311 at the domestic box office and $850 million worldwide.
Other top stateside earners this summer include Sony’s animated “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” ($381 million), Disney and Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” ($358 million), “The Little Mermaid” remake ($298 million) and the Jim Caviezel-led action thriller “Sound of Freedom” ($181 million). Those blockbusters helped to make up for underperforming tentpoles like DC’s superhero adaptation “The Flash” and Disney’s remake of “Haunted Mansion.”
Sony’s late-summer event pic Gran Turismodeclared victory at the weekend box office race with a $17.3 million domestic opening, a somewhat muted start for a movie based on a popular video game. The hope now is that an A CinemaScore from audiences will provide a turbo boost in the days to come.
Directed by Neill Blomkamp, the racing pic had been set to launch nationwide Aug. 11 but switched gears because of the actors strike and the resulting prohibition on the cast — led by Orlando Bloom and David Harbour — doing any press. The studio instead hosted two weekends of sneaks and a handful of fan screenings to build buzz before opening the movie everywhere Aug. 25.
On Tuesday, the box office sensation notched another major milestone when passing up Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight to become the biggest Warner Bros. movie ever in North America, not adjusted for inflation.
Barbie’s Tuesday box was $6.1 million, for a domestic total of $537.4 million. In 2008, The Dark Knight topped out at $536 million.
Inspired by Mattel’s famous doll, Barbie jumped the $1.2 billion mark at the worldwide box office on Tuesday, where it is the second-biggest Warners’ release in history behind the final Harry Potter film, which grossed $1.34 billion globally, not adjusted for inflation. ..
Epically bad numbers for the horror flick LAST VOYAGE OF DEMETER but Barbenheimer continues it’s odd summer rampage on the box office.
While did the movie do so bad? Some have opinions.. we think people are bored with vampires, the marketing was bad, and this is not the magic week of summer for horror. Closer to September always works better..
But from Deadline, they say this:
Unfortunately, the tanking of Amblin/Universal’s $45M-costing The Last Voyage of the Demeter stands out like a wart, since we haven’t had many misfires this summer. Granted, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One‘s profitability might be in question next to their exorbitant Covid costs. But these pics have put up tentpole grosses in the nine digits, and have been mass draws (just not as massive as they were hoped to be). Note the filmmakers aimed to keep this period horror pic as cheap as they could: Exteriors were shot in Malta, while interior were shot in Germany, both those countries respectively having tax credits of 50% and 30%.
— Read on deadline.com/2023/08/box-office-barbie-last-voyage-of-the-demeter-1235460243/
Everyone is talking about the movie “SOUND OF FREEDOM“. Everyone that is except for journalists, unless they’re giving some commentary that only the “Fox News crowd“ appreciates the film.
So from what we are told, SOUND OF FREEDOM is a pretty controversial movie about human trafficking, and yes, the media has been alarmed by the insistence of the “QAnon“ crowd, urging people to see it.
Before the movie came out, human trafficking seemed to be an important issue that was widespread. After SOUND OF FREEDOM began to take the box office by storm in a sleeper summer style, most dismissed widespread and conspiratorial human trafficking with immediacy.
Queue the DEADLINE headline: The words talk about the number one film in the movie industry. The big top films, nationwide, and how much money they made, your typical Sunday quarterbacking.
Not even a mention of SOUND OF FREEDOM.
However, when you look at the real numbers, SOUND is now number two in the nation and seemingly rising.
That was not predicted.
The media not talking about it will not make SOUND OF FREEDOM go away.
This news developing tonight.. “Avatar 2” has come up short. Disney was hoping for a blow out with upwards of $175 million this weekend. The total is more like $130 million, which is certainly a big number but not the one to crow about.
It is starting to look like a Blue Christmas for a movie that everyone waited for for 13 years and cost at least $300 million and maybe as much as a billion with a B..
And consider it: With previews you will be at a theater for 4 hours or so. Is that worth it for a movie on the weekend before Christmas while Shopping and Dropping still has to take place?
Why am I not surprised by the negative reaction to “The Whale”? When I saw the film at the Hamptons Film Festival, I thought it was emotionally manipulative and over hyped. Since then, a lot of audiences didn’t like its take on the morbidly obese.
This second weekend of release saw a roughly 50% drop from the debut week. This weighty movie is not going to get off the ground. Brendan Fraser is fine, but his 600 pound fat suit is turning people off. The incredible nostalgia for Fraser, who was never a great actor, is not going to carry this thing over any threshold. Fraser is lucky: this is a light year for Best Actor nominees. He will get the semi-final nod because of it, but he won’t win.
Fraser’s 90s nostalgia seems similar, by the way, to the sentimental clamor for Ke Huy Quan in “Everything Everywhere.” It’s nice to see the “Indiana Jones” kid back, but this is a martial arts sci fi movie that becomes repetitive very quickly. Again, a nom for Best Supporting Actor, but Judd Hirsch and Brendan Gleeson are the real candidates for the top honor.
Meanwhile back to AVATAR… they have a long way to go to a billion.
Visually stunning, they call it.. ..unwatchable say others.. Just not enough time say the rest!
And deservedly so.. The film was spectacular–though perhaps a little on the run time scale than we’d like, but that is Marvel for you! With a run time of almost 3 solid hours, WAKANDA did at times feel like it was FOREVER.
The movie gave a beautiful theatrical sendoff to Chadwick Boseman through the film, the emotions seemed to go beyond the fiction of the movie and seemed to showcase true emotions of the cast..
And finally, the action sequences in Black Panther seemed original and inspired. Really, really good.
Now on to the box office!
It is expected that by the time the holiday weekend ends, WAKANDA will have earned over $18-185 million in the United States. Globally, the film is expected to exceed $300 million.
From reports, it did not do as well in Asia Pacific markets–perhaps playing into that is China refusing to allow its release in that country.
The $185 prediction knocks 2013’s HUNGER GAMES off the board in biggest November releases.
Audience exits still amazing for Wakanda Forever, with 93% on Screen Engine/Comscore’s PostTrak and an 85% definite recommend, with kids under 12 giving it a near 100% and 72% recommend. Guy-leaning at 52%, 45% between 18-34, with 37% over 35. Very diverse film at 44% Black-leading, 21% Hispanic and Latino, 20% Caucasian, and 15% Asian/other.
Landing the top offshore debut for the studios was Paramount’s Smile with $14.5M from 58 markets, and $36.5M globally. The horror audience grinned in all areas with good word of mouth for the Parker Finn-directed movie that was also tops domestically.
Reinforcing that audiences want to go back to the cinema for something fresh, on a like-for-like basis, the offshore start on Smile is 18% above Truth or Dare, 55% ahead of Hereditary and on par with The Black Phone. Smile, whose first footage intrigued exhibition at CineEurope earlier this year, was led by the UK with $2M from 520 locations at No. 2. France was also a No. 2 debut with $1.4M from 303 sites. In horror-leaning Mexico, the movie scored a No. 1 start of $1.1M from 855 locations. Rounding out the Top 5 were Germany ($1M from 316) and Australia ($800K from 206)
We saw the movie this weekend as well. Amazing cinematic effects–the upside down camera angles.. the dreadful music.. the dark hallways that did NOT have something jump out, and the scenes where something did..
It was all effective.
However there were some less than great things. It felt like a horror movie that turned into a thriller and then back into a horror again, with a twist ending that went right back to the ending that no one seemed to want..
We ended up liking the thriller angle of the film more than the horror. But boy. those jump scares. We thought someone walking down the aisle to go to the bathroom in the theater was going to fall backwards–they chose the scene that featured the jumpiest of the jump scares to walk down the dark steps..
The marketing for the movie was brilliant, with smiling people gracing baseball games and public locations for the past two weeks. Nice move!
But what few are talking about with this is the ‘smile’ concept. It is based on a short horror film.. but it also seems to borrow a lot of the concept of IT FOLLOWS. In that movie, what followed was a sexually transmitted disease and bad reputation. In this film, it is mental illness. We cloud it and hide it with a smile.
I am not sure if the film makers went for a deeper meaning than what we got, but it sure felt like something much more meaningful was hiding under the surface.
Homophobia is the excuse for the film doing poorly..
More from the DEADLINE article:
“Even with glowing reviews, great Rotten Tomatoes scores, an A CinemaScore, etc, straight people, especially in certain parts of the country, just didn’t show up for Bros. And that’s disappointing but it is what it is,” he continued.
The comedian stands by the movie and encouraged “everyone who ISN’T a homophobic weirdo” to go watch Bros.
