The box office battle of the new week begins.
There are going to be a couple of things to watch very closely over the next several days, namely how well Obsession and The Backrooms perform during their next weekend at the box office now that some fresh competition is arriving.
Remember, Obsession was originally scheduled to hit streaming this week, but that date was pushed back due to its continued success in theaters. Meanwhile, The Backrooms just keeps plugging away, posting surprisingly strong numbers even on weeknights. Neither film appears ready to disappear just yet.
This week, however, brings us a pair of nostalgia-fueled challengers. One is built on 1980s superheroes and the other on early 2000s comedy. Whether either one connects with modern audiences remains to be seen.
Scary Movie 6 premieres this weekend, as does Masters of the Universe. Both films have generated anticipation and, in theory, should attract decent crowds. Yet early projections suggest that the He-Man adaptation could be surprisingly ill-fated at the box office, while Scary Movie 5 may not be nearly as funny as audiences had hoped.
While regular moviegoers have not yet fully weighed in, paid reviewers certainly have. For the most part, the reviews for Masters of the Universe have been lukewarm, while Scary Movie 6 has been getting hit even harder.
If we were to compare them to beverages, Masters of the Universe would be a flat seltzer water and Scary Movie 6 would be that same seltzer after somebody microwaved it.
As a matter of fact, when comparing the two films, Masters of the Universe should easily dominate the box office. The question is whether Generation X and older Millennials can convince their kids to care about He-Man. The kids may not be all right when it comes to 1980s nostalgia. The decade is long gone, and nostalgia for it may have finally started running out of steam.
Then again, Scary Movie has its own problem. If the jokes don’t make people laugh, nothing else really matters.
There is one important caveat, however. Critics have never been particularly fond of movies like Scary Movie. They didn’t like the earlier Scary Movie films. They didn’t like many of the National Lampoon’s movies. They weren’t exactly champions of The Naked Gun either. Irreverent comedies that exist primarily to make audiences laugh have often received a chilly reception from reviewers.
We’ll see how it all plays out.
Maybe the critics are right.
Maybe audiences will disagree.
And maybe, just maybe, Obsession and The Backrooms will once again dominate the weekend.
To be determined at a theater near you.