Welcome to the Box Office Oracle–where new movies are pitted against each other for box office supremacy and only one can claim victory. Each week, I will be doing a quick box office prediction for all wide new releases. Sorry, obscure indie films I’ve never heard of, but you aren’t going to be discussed here unless you become big.
This is also something I’m going to keep as free of “controversy” as I can. This means that if, I don’t know, Jon Voight is voicing an evil government agent talking bear in a DreamWorks movie, I’m not going to make a bunch of Trump jokes. If a Tom Cruise actioner comes out, I’m not going to make a bunch of Scientology cracks. You get the idea. I want for this to be kept fun and simple.
So, without any further discussion, let’s get into this weekend’s three big new releases, The Call of the Wild, Brahms: The Boy II, and Impractical Jokers: The Movie.
The Call of the Wild
Probably the only movie with any chance of breaking out this weekend, The Call of the Wild features a hairy, lovable hero who’s a little rough around the edges. It also stars a dog. Based off of the well-known (and violent) children’s novel, modern special effects have been used to ensure the dog can do all of the crazy dangerous shit he does in the book (even if it means he doesn’t have balls now). Ford brings some nice marquee value to this, and it’s the first live-action movie from Chris Sanders, the co-director of animated classics like Lilo & Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon.
The first film to come out under the “20th Century Studios” banner, Disney is handling this like it was one of their own movies, and is targeting the family crowd. Unfortunately for them, Sonic is playing and playing strongly, and hey, if you were a kid, which movie would you rather go to? Still, a decent take of $14 million would be okay.
Why Your Fortune Cookie Tells You To Go: This looks like a rousing adventure film with the appropriate amount of dog and man bonding.
Why Your Fortune Cookie Tells You To Stay Away: Once upon a time, my mom went to Turner & Hooch having no idea how it ended. In other words, you can never be too careful with dog movies.
Today’s Lucky Lotto Numbers: $14 million opening; $47 million finish.
Brahms: The Boy II
Oh, hey, they made a sequel to The Boy, that movie where there was…an evil doll or something. Look, it was a while ago, okay? I’m sure there have been people who have been clamoring for more of…whatever exactly The Boy was.
The sequel involves a haplessly stupid family moving into the creepy mansion, where the boy (no, not the boy of the title) finds a creepy doll buried in the ground, which his parents let him keep because they’re idiots. Shit goes down from there.
The Boy II is being brought to us by–wait for it–STX Films, and if you’ve ever read this column before, then you’ll know they are always in financial trouble, as they have to live off each movie they put out individually, and it’s all because of fucking UglyDolls of all things, because life is weird. Anyway, The Boy II probably represents a desperate attempt by them to start a franchise, but I’m afraid that’s not going to happen here. Look for $5 million.
Why Your Fortune Cookie Tells You To Go: This looks kind of like a Slappy the Dummy movie if it weren’t played for laughs. Kidding aside, the trailer is pretty good for this one, even if it seems to give the whole film away.
Why Your Fortune Cookie Tells You To Stay Away: I mean, I can’t even tell you what year the original film came out. Not sure how many people were wanting a sequel to this.
Today’s Lucky Lotto Numbers: $5 million opening; $14 million finish.
Impractical Jokers: The Movie
Okay then…
So…they made a movie out of Impractical Jokers, that silly series in which a bunch of dudes play elaborate jokes on each other. Or at least that’s what I think the show’s about. In my day, TruTV was Court TV, and it showed Cops reruns all night, thank you very much. But seriously, what a weird turnaround that channel took.
Anyway, if you’re like me, you’re shocked this is even going to theaters, but it is, so I guess there must be an audience for it. Or maybe it’s just February, when anything can happen, and with barely anything even resembling a prominent marketing campaign, we should be looking at about $2 million here…which would probably be enough to eclipse the production budget.
Why Your Fortune Cookie Tells You To Go: If you ever wondered what a Jackass movie would look like if it were rated PG-13, this might answer your question.
Why Your Fortune Cookie Tells You To Stay Away: The movie will probably be on cable television by the end of the year.
* Other fun stuff…
* Sonic is easily going to top the box office this weekend, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it’s able to beat the remake-in-name-only of The Invisible Man next week as well.
* I still haven’t gone to Birds of Prey or even Bad Boys for Life. For someone who writes about movies every week, I sure am behind on them right now.
* It’s hardly worth noting, but The Boy II has a dismal 8% “rotten” rating over at RT. This should shock absolutely no one given how critics treat any horror movie they don’t like as though it was one of the worst ordeals they ever had to go through in their lives.
* Early buzz for Onward is going to make us all cry our eyes out, because Pixar. It’s also being reported that it features Pixar’s first openly gay character, but I’m not sure if this is true or not.
* Some people are probably going to cry foul that special effects are used to bring the dog to life in Call of the Wild, but it’s hard to watch The Adventures of Milo & Otis has a cat person with how fucking much they were physically hurting the cat and dog in that film, so good for them (luckily for me, Homeward Bound was produced by Disney and had the budget required to pull it all off safely, so it’s cool).
* Have a good weekend, all!