One of the more puzzling box office flops of the year was David Leitch’s The Fall Guy. Despite good reviews, and the fact that it paired two Barbenheimer VIP’s, Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt, the movie performed disappointingly at the box office. It only earned about $92 million domestically, a disaster for a movie that cost in the $150 million range. However, folks who saw the movie mostly liked it, and one of them turned out to be a former Ryan Gosling co-star, Russell Crowe.
Posting on X, Gosling’s The Nice Guys co-star wrote, “Have you seen The Fall Guy? It’s a lot of fun. Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt are great together, lithely pivoting from drama to romance to comedy and back. Worth the watch.”
Crowe and Gosling had high hopes for The Nice Guys, which was an action-comedy they made with Shane Black back in 2016. There was talk of the movie being spun-out into a Lethal Weapon-style action franchise, but the movie performed disappointingly, only earning $62 million worldwide, which isn’t awful as the movie only carried a $50 million budget. As it’s become a cult hit, it likely broke even eventually, although The Fall Guy certainly has more territory to make up in that regard.
It’s definitely nice to see Crowe supporting one of his old co-star’s movies, as The Fall Guy certainly deserved a better fate at the box office. That said, before you pour one out for Gosling or Blunt, know that Gosling already has Project Hail Maryin the works, while Emily Blunt is starring in Spielberg’s new movie. Clearly, the two are doing just fine. As for Crowe, he’s paying the bad guy in Sony’s Spider-Verse entry, Kraven The Hunter, while he’s also getting buzz for his role as Hermann Göring in next year’s Nuremberg.
Do you think Crowe is right about The Fall Guy? Let us know in the comments!
One of the more puzzling box office flops of the year was David Leitch’s The Fall Guy. Despite good reviews, and the fact that it paired two Barbenheimer VIP’s, Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt, the movie performed disappointingly at the box office. It only earned about $92 million domestically, a disaster for a movie that cost in the $150 million range. However, folks who saw the movie mostly liked it, and one of them turned out to be a former Ryan Gosling co-star, Russell Crowe.
Posting on X, Gosling’s The Nice Guys co-star wrote, “Have you seen The Fall Guy? It’s a lot of fun. Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt are great together, lithely pivoting from drama to romance to comedy and back. Worth the watch.”
Crowe and Gosling had high hopes for The Nice Guys, which was an action-comedy they made with Shane Black back in 2016. There was talk of the movie being spun-out into a Lethal Weapon-style action franchise, but the movie performed disappointingly, only earning $62 million worldwide, which isn’t awful as the movie only carried a $50 million budget. As it’s become a cult hit, it likely broke even eventually, although The Fall Guy certainly has more territory to make up in that regard.
It’s definitely nice to see Crowe supporting one of his old co-star’s movies, as The Fall Guy certainly deserved a better fate at the box office. That said, before you pour one out for Gosling or Blunt, know that Gosling already has Project Hail Maryin the works, while Emily Blunt is starring in Spielberg’s new movie. Clearly, the two are doing just fine. As for Crowe, he’s paying the bad guy in Sony’s Spider-Verse entry, Kraven The Hunter, while he’s also getting buzz for his role as Hermann Göring in next year’s Nuremberg.
Do you think Crowe is right about The Fall Guy? Let us know in the comments!
So goes one of the coolest one-liners I have ever heard, and it’s part of one of the most unheralded Christmas action movies ever. Now, Christmas action movies have always been a thing. Something about the juxtaposition of the holidays and ultra-violent action has always been irresistible to Hollywood. In movies like First Blood and To Live and Die in LA, the holiday theme makes the desperately violent scenario all the more grim. At the same time, other classics like Lethal Weapon and Die Hard ultimately have Christmas messages about friendship and family that come through just as strongly as in a straight-up Christmas movie like It’s a Wonderful Life.
Yet, not every Christmas action flick becomes a classic, which brings me to this special Christmas edition of The Best Movie You Never Saw, where we tackle the Dolph Lundgren Actioner I Come In Peace, which is also known by the title it’s currently streaming as, Dark Angel.
Dolph Lundgren’s career was at a strange place in 1990. Mainstream action hero stardom hadn’t really panned out for him, with Masters of the Universe being a flop, but he ended up signing on for a slew of movies that weren’t quite the DTV-level work he’s become known for in the late part of the 90s, but weren’t quite big studio movies either. They were B-movies, albeit ones with decent budgets that were intended for some theatrical play. Those movies include Red Scorpion, The Punisher, Showdown in Little Tokyo, and Dark Angel.
This was one of the first produced screenplays for writer David Koepp, who would become an A-list screenwriter after Jurassic Park and a slew of their hits, including Mission Impossible, War of the Worlds, Spider-Man and many more. It was directed by action specialist Craig R. Baxley, who helmed two other Best Movie You Never Saw classics, Action Jackson and Stone Cold.Dark Angel was produced independently but on a high enough level that the idea was that it would sell to a major studio, something which didn’t happen, and the film only received a middling theatrical release as I Come in Peace. Yet, it was a worldwide hit on the home video market, particularly in the UK, where it kept its original title.
Dolph Lundgren plays a down-and-out cop named Jack Caine, who works in Houston and is on the trail of a drug lord named Victor Manning, who runs a crew of yuppie drug dealers called The White Boys. In the film’s opening moments, the White Boys not only steal a massive load of cocaine from a police station, but they blow it up for good measure while also making the mistake of killing Caine’s partner Ray, thanks mainly to the fact that Jack, who’s presented as a pretty incompetent cop, got distracted by a liquor store holdup that gave him a chance to unleash some roundhouse kicks, and left his partner to be discovered by the bad guys.
Yet, the White Boys aren’t Jack’s only problem. There’s also a hulking Alien named Talec, played by a friend of JoBlo.com’s Matthias Hues, who is using heroin to trigger the release of endorphins in his human victims, that he can suck out and sell as a drug in his home world. How’s that for a high concept? An alien cop-out to stop Talec is quickly neutralized, but he passes on his alien tech to Jack, who now has to deal with the White Boys and this alien. But, in true buddy cop fashion, he’s got a new partner, a geeky FBI agent named Smith, played by Brian Benben, a face known to 90s aficionados for two reasons. He was the lead on the sexy HBO series Dream On, which many of us watched thanks to all the skin it featured. The other is that the lucky guy ended up marrying dream girl Madeline Stowe – and they’re still married today! What a lucky guy! Lundgren also has a love interest in the movie, a coroner played by Betty Brantley. Lundgren, believe it or not, is charming in their romantic scenes, thanks mainly to Brantley being a rather high-class love interest. Her and the pretty skilled Benben help elevate Lundgren’s acting game considerably, making him seem much more comfortable on camera, which carried over to his next film, Showdown in Little Tokyo. One imagines Benben coaching him on being a little more laid back and naturalistic – and it worked well.
When I Come in Peace was made, stories about Dolph’s interesting background emerged. A native of Sweden, before becoming a model and then action star, Lundgren was an academic with a degree in chemical engineering and a Fullbright scholarship to MIT. In the movie, Benben’s FBI agent initially treats him like a meathead until Dolph brings him back to his loft, which is full of modern art, a wine rack and a pool table, showing the multitudes of the characters. Usually, rebel cops lived in shithole apartments or, like Riggs, a dumpy trailer. Lundgren’s place is sleek and sophisticated, just like the actor himself. Sure, he rocks a Henley and pumps iron, but he also likes to relax and unwind with a lovely Merlot. Yet, he’s also enough of a lunkhead, and when he realizes he’s dealing with an alien bad guy, he’s pretty pissed to discover that his new partner and captain don’t believe his claims of drug dealing aliens.
This is a hallmark of director Baxley’s work. His rugged guy heroes are often unconventionally sophisticated or unconventional. In Action Jackson, the title character has a law degree and rocks a tux (and a Henley), while in Stone Cold, Brian Bosworth’s copper lives on the beach with a pet iguana. The use of an army of white yuppie drug dealers is a nice touch, too, with them the kind of bad guys you don’t mind being mowed down, especially when their boss is Mr Gorpley from Perfect Strangers. Matthias Hues is also a cool-looking villain with his platinum blond mullet, being 6’5 and a good match for Lundgren who, in harsh, more modern action stars like Vin Diesel, The Rock and Jason Statham who take to heart, doesn’t mind taking his licks on screen and being an underdog.
I Come in Peace (a title I prefer to Dark Angel) is a fun little action movie with good Houston, Texas locations and a very evocative of its era score by Jan Hammer of Miami Vice fame. Granted, it’s more than a little dumb, and there could have been a little more action worked in, with the White Boys initially set up as a much more significant threat than they end up being. I always wanted a massive body count in movies like this, but I think the budget was probably too low.
Of the top movies of the early 1990s, Ghost may have been the biggest that nobody talks about anymore. Think about it: it was the second highest-grossing film of 1990 (behind only Home Alone) and yet you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who could name a scene outside of the sensual pottery sequence. Hell, can you even give a rundown of the plot? But this was the film that your parents were going to see in theaters or renting, proving an immediate topic of the pop culture water cooler. Yet, this was far from being anticipated, as even star Demi Moore figured Ghost could have been a huge bust.
While noting that her most recent film The Substance had potential to either find its audience or flop, Demi Moore said, “I felt that way also about Ghost because it had so many different genres mixed together that, truly, I thought, ‘This could either be amazing or a f*cking disaster.’ Either way, it’s usually the kind of juice that says, ‘Step in. Take the risk. Roll the dice. Let’s see what happens.’”
What happened was Ghost — led by both Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze — became a sensation that, despite falling to Home Alone domestically, ended up being the top earner of 1990 worldwide with $517 million, not to mention breaking the record for home video rentals. With that kind of haul, it would trail only Jurassic Park, The Lion King and Forrest Gump by the time the first half of the decade was over. It, too, edged out eventual Best Picture winner Dances with Wolves.
Speaking of awards, Ghost would win Whoopi Goldberg the Best Supporting Actress Oscar (Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze would both get Golden Globe nods) and Bruce Joel Rubin would take home Best Original Screenplay. Other nominations included Best Picture, Best Editing and Best Original Score.
While I maintain that Ghost mostly lives on through *that* scene (the AFI even cited “Unchained Melody” as one of the greatest movie songs because of it) and was mostly propelled by soon-to-be Sexiest Man Alive Patrick Swayze, there’s no denying its success isn’t one of the more notable of its time. And to think that Airplane! and Top Secret!’s Jerry Zucker directed it!
Do you think Ghost lives on ~35 years later or was it too much of its time?
Of the top movies of the early 1990s, Ghost may have been the biggest that nobody talks about anymore. Think about it: it was the second highest-grossing film of 1990 (behind only Home Alone) and yet you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who could name a scene outside of the sensual pottery sequence. Hell, can you even give a rundown of the plot? But this was the film that your parents were going to see in theaters or renting, proving an immediate topic of the pop culture water cooler. Yet, this was far from being anticipated, as even star Demi Moore figured Ghost could have been a huge bust.
While noting that her most recent film The Substance had potential to either find its audience or flop, Demi Moore said, “I felt that way also about Ghost because it had so many different genres mixed together that, truly, I thought, ‘This could either be amazing or a f*cking disaster.’ Either way, it’s usually the kind of juice that says, ‘Step in. Take the risk. Roll the dice. Let’s see what happens.’”
What happened was Ghost — led by both Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze — became a sensation that, despite falling to Home Alone domestically, ended up being the top earner of 1990 worldwide with $517 million, not to mention breaking the record for home video rentals. With that kind of haul, it would trail only Jurassic Park, The Lion King and Forrest Gump by the time the first half of the decade was over. It, too, edged out eventual Best Picture winner Dances with Wolves.
Speaking of awards, Ghost would win Whoopi Goldberg the Best Supporting Actress Oscar (Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze would both get Golden Globe nods) and Bruce Joel Rubin would take home Best Original Screenplay. Other nominations included Best Picture, Best Editing and Best Original Score.
While I maintain that Ghost mostly lives on through *that* scene (the AFI even cited “Unchained Melody” as one of the greatest movie songs because of it) and was mostly propelled by soon-to-be Sexiest Man Alive Patrick Swayze, there’s no denying its success isn’t one of the more notable of its time. And to think that Airplane! and Top Secret!’s Jerry Zucker directed it!
Do you think Ghost lives on ~35 years later or was it too much of its time?
Break out the Post-It Notes because Romy and Michele may be headed towards another reunion. While a sequel to Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion may not have been officially greenlit, star Mira Sorvino (that’s Romy) has hopes that it’s the closest it’s ever been to being ready to go.
Speaking with People, Sorvio said that the Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion sequel isn’t entirely ready but just needs a few more tweaks before cameras are ready to roll. “They’ve done his deal, they’ve done Lisa [Kudrow] and my deals as executive producers. [Original screenwriter Robin Schiff] has written multiple drafts of an amazing funny script, which checks all the boxes for all the fans.” As for a time frame, Sorvino noted, “And they’re just going back and forth, tweaking things here and there, and [there are] rumors of shooting it second quarter next year…But it’s not officially greenlit, so I can’t say that it’s officially greenlit.”
Both Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow have been open about and supportive of a Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion sequel. While the movie was hardly a smash at the box office, it has developed quite a following since, due in part to home video and TV airings (although you really can’t be watching this on TBS if you want the full Janeane Garofalo experience). There was actually a TV movie prequel starring Katherine Heigl and Alexandra Breckenridge as Romy and Michele, respectively, and even a musical, although it never made the Broadway splash it aspired for.
But with ‘90s nostalgia still being yearned for, a cult following for the movie and enough of a set-up at the end of the movie to jumpstart a plot, we can see a sequel for Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion working. But with streaming services so prominent and Disney having produced the movie, I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets greenlit as a Disney+ exclusive.
What are your thoughts on a Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion sequel? Do you think there is a bit enough fanbase to support it? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.
Break out the Post-It Notes because Romy and Michele may be headed towards another reunion. While a sequel to Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion may not have been officially greenlit, star Mira Sorvino (that’s Romy) has hopes that it’s the closest it’s ever been to being ready to go.
Speaking with People, Sorvio said that the Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion sequel isn’t entirely ready but just needs a few more tweaks before cameras are ready to roll. “They’ve done his deal, they’ve done Lisa [Kudrow] and my deals as executive producers. [Original screenwriter Robin Schiff] has written multiple drafts of an amazing funny script, which checks all the boxes for all the fans.” As for a time frame, Sorvino noted, “And they’re just going back and forth, tweaking things here and there, and [there are] rumors of shooting it second quarter next year…But it’s not officially greenlit, so I can’t say that it’s officially greenlit.”
Both Mira Sorvino and Lisa Kudrow have been open about and supportive of a Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion sequel. While the movie was hardly a smash at the box office, it has developed quite a following since, due in part to home video and TV airings (although you really can’t be watching this on TBS if you want the full Janeane Garofalo experience). There was actually a TV movie prequel starring Katherine Heigl and Alexandra Breckenridge as Romy and Michele, respectively, and even a musical, although it never made the Broadway splash it aspired for.
But with ‘90s nostalgia still being yearned for, a cult following for the movie and enough of a set-up at the end of the movie to jumpstart a plot, we can see a sequel for Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion working. But with streaming services so prominent and Disney having produced the movie, I wouldn’t be surprised if it gets greenlit as a Disney+ exclusive.
What are your thoughts on a Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion sequel? Do you think there is a bit enough fanbase to support it? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below.
Plot: Follows Martian, a covert CIA agent, ordered to abandon his undercover life and return to London Station. When the love he left behind reappears, romance reignites. His career, his real identity and his mission are pitted against his heart; hurling them both into a deadly game of international intrigue and espionage.
Review: While you may love a good action spy movie, give me a mature, calculated drama about espionage any day. While there is a time and a place for James Bond, Ethan Hunt, or Jason Bourne, the psychological intensity of a well-crafted thriller does not come along every day. The Agency, based on the French series Le Bureau des Legendes, is a solid showcase of deliberate and complex tension done right. With a masterful cast led by Michael Fassbender and Jodie Turner-Smith, The Agency certainly showcases some intense action. Still, it thrives on solid performances from the rock-solid ensemble of acting talent. Few series can match The Agency‘s accomplished writing and directing, which will surely blow a lot of viewers away while the deliberate pace frustrates others.
The ten-episode first season of The Agency opens with Michael Fassbender’s embedded agent, codenamed Martian, as he breaks off a romance with Sami Zahir (Jodie Turner-Smith), with whom he has developed real feelings. Returning back to London, Martian must contend with the psychological toll of re-assuming his real identity while reconnecting with his daughter and coworkers at the CIA. Martian is almost immediately pulled into a storm involving an asset that may have become a double agent and risks exposing countless spies working undercover across the globe. Under the leadership of his boss, Henry (Jeffrey Wright), and their station chief, Bosko (Richard Gere), Martian must help figure out their next steps before an international incident occurs. He must also do this while reuniting with Sami, who is also now in London. The complications of balancing a romance conducted while undercover while eluding your employers and trying to do your job extract a psychological toll on Martian, one of many displayed throughout the series.
The first three episodes were made available for this review, which may be more than enough for some viewers. When I said this series is unlike James Bond, I meant it in many ways. There are a lot of quiet moments in The Agency, including a long, dialogue-free sequence in which Martian meticulously sweeps his London apartment to look for tracking devices and bugs. The deliberate pacing of scenes like this may be boring to some, even though I found them fascinating. The first episode features a car chase through Ukraine, an asset trying to escape. At the same time, London-based operatives pool their skills to try and extract him before he lands in a foreign nation, and some intense arguments in person and across virtual screens. Between those scenes, there are a lot of moments of spies watching other spies, making sure they are not spies for the other spy agency but actually good spies working for our spies. If that sentence was hard to follow, some of The Agency may pose a challenge for you.
The stellar cast helps this series rise above a lack of momentum. Michael Fassbender is as quiet and virtually emotionless as Martian. Using an American accent, Fassbender plays this role similarly to his turn in David Fincher’s The Killer. Both are calculating and of few words but physically embody a sense of experience and a slightly off-balance mental state. Luckily, Fassbender’s stoic approach is offset by a sultry turn by Jodie Turner-Smith. Jeffrey Wright gets the next largest role as Martian’s supervisor and seems to have the most balanced screen time at work and at home. Richard Gere is good in a supporting turn as the hard-nosed station chief, Bosko. Katherine Waterston and John Magaro appear in smaller roles as analysts supporting field agents, with the great Harriet Sansom Harris bringing great presence to her turn as psychologist Dr. Blake, who serves as both a resource and a source of accountability for the agents.
Produced by George Clooney, the whole first season of The Agency was written by Jez and John-Henry Butterworth (Edge of Tomorrow, Ford v. Ferrari). The series’ first two episodes were directed by Joe Wright (Atonement, Cyrano), who also serves as an executive producer. The remaining eight episodes were helmed by Zetna Fuentes (The Nevers), Grant Heslov (Catch-22), and Philip Martin (The Crown). The Agency boasts a muted color palette and intense moments of quiet interspersed with bursts of violence and whipsmart dialogue exchanges. There are so many moments in this series that need little to no dialogue to convey the overwhelming weight of what is going on in the lives of these characters. There are plot threads involving characters in countries around the globe happening simultaneously, pulled together into a balanced story that you need to pay attention to to follow appropriately.
I would not be shocked if The Agency divides critics as much as general audiences. This is a series that does not pick up consistent momentum until well into the third season and, even at that point, leaves so many questions as to what exactly is going on that it will leave many scratching their heads. Michael Fassbender is a great lead but is more of an ensemble player in this series that picks and chooses who you are supposed to focus on without giving you much to orient yourself. The Agency is a drama about the emotional and psychological strain of being an undercover agent. It delivers one of the most blunt and realistic looks at how an intelligence series operates. Do not expect this series to feature a supervillain with a master plan, but you will find yourself wondering how sexy the life of a spy may actually be after you see what it can do to a person. The Agency is an interesting premise with a solid cast that may be a bit too languid for its own good but still manages to be a pretty intriguing series.
The Agency premieres on November 29th on Paramount+ with Showtime.
The folks at the House of Mouse have a lot to celebrate this year, with them being able to lay claim to three of the highest-grossing movies of 2024. This summer, they had back-to-back smashes with Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine, and now Moana 2 just set a Thanksgiving record, making a jaw-dropping $135.5 million and $221 million over the five-day holiday according to Deadline. Yowza. That’s a crazy number for a movie that was retrofitted from a streaming series into a feature film and quite a turnaround for a company that was in the dog house in 2023 following a series of pricey flops.
Our box office predictions were way off for Moana 2, which just grew and grew as the weekend went on. What’s doubly impressive is the fact that its success didn’t suck up all the air at the box office, with Universal’s Wicked having stellar holdover business, earning $80 million, which marks a modest 29% decline from its first weekend. That’s an impressive hold for a movie that opened as well as it did. It’s made over $262 million to date domestically and may be well on its way to a final gross in the $500 million range. That’s good news for Universal, as they have a sequel opening next Thanksgiving.
Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II came in hot in third place, with a $30.7 million weekend, marking a modest 44% week-to-week decline. It’s made about $111 million so far, with it likely to pass $200 million domestically. Whether or not it’ll make enough to merit a Gladiator III all depends on the global box office take, but it will still rank as one of the highest-grossing historical epics ever made.
Dwayne Johnson’s other movie in theaters, Red One, had an excellent hold this weekend, with it only dipping 2% to $12.8 million and a $76 million total. It’ll easily cross the $100 million mark, and while that’s pretty low considering its $200 million-plus budget, it’ll for sure be a blockbuster when it hits Prime Video, which should happen before Christmas.
Another holiday flick, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, managed an excellent hold, with it adding 2% this weekend for a $3.27 million weekend and a $32 million total. That’s a good number for a low-budget, faith-based film, and it will soon become Lionsgate’s highest-grossing movie of the year. That’s a rare win for a studio with a particularly horrible 2024.
Lower down the chart, Angel Studios’s Bonhoeffer lost a large chunk of its audience, with it making $2.4 million – a 60% decline from week one. The faith-based audience likely opted to see the more uplifting Best Christmas Pageant Ever instead. Its total domestic haul is just under $10 million. Venom: The Last Dance made $2.2 million in seventh place for a $137 million haul, which is disappointing for a superhero film but not disastrous either. Globally, it’s closing in on the $500 million mark. It will likely finish its run slightly ahead of Venom: Let There Be Carnage at the global box office, although that film was hampered by the pandemic.
In eighth place, A24’s Heretic continued to perform well, making $956K for a $26 million total. It might be able to crawl to $30 million. The Wild Robot is starting to wrap up its run in ninth place, making $670K, adding to its $142 million-plus total. A Real Pain rounded out the top ten, with $848k and a $6.1 million total. A low-budget charmer, this one should find a solid audience when it streams on Hulu sometime in the next few months.
Next weekend promises to be relatively quiet in terms new releases, so don’t expect much movement in the top five. What did you see this holiday weekend? Let us know in the comments!
The folks at the House of Mouse have a lot to celebrate this year, with them being able to lay claim to three of the highest-grossing movies of 2024. This summer, they had back-to-back smashes with Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine, and now Moana 2 just set a Thanksgiving record, making a jaw-dropping $135.5 million and $221 million over the five-day holiday according to Deadline. Yowza. That’s a crazy number for a movie that was retrofitted from a streaming series into a feature film and quite a turnaround for a company that was in the dog house in 2023 following a series of pricey flops.
Our box office predictions were way off for Moana 2, which just grew and grew as the weekend went on. What’s doubly impressive is the fact that its success didn’t suck up all the air at the box office, with Universal’s Wicked having stellar holdover business, earning $80 million, which marks a modest 29% decline from its first weekend. That’s an impressive hold for a movie that opened as well as it did. It’s made over $262 million to date domestically and may be well on its way to a final gross in the $500 million range. That’s good news for Universal, as they have a sequel opening next Thanksgiving.
Ridley Scott’s Gladiator II came in hot in third place, with a $30.7 million weekend, marking a modest 44% week-to-week decline. It’s made about $111 million so far, with it likely to pass $200 million domestically. Whether or not it’ll make enough to merit a Gladiator III all depends on the global box office take, but it will still rank as one of the highest-grossing historical epics ever made.
Dwayne Johnson’s other movie in theaters, Red One, had an excellent hold this weekend, with it only dipping 2% to $12.8 million and a $76 million total. It’ll easily cross the $100 million mark, and while that’s pretty low considering its $200 million-plus budget, it’ll for sure be a blockbuster when it hits Prime Video, which should happen before Christmas.
Another holiday flick, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, managed an excellent hold, with it adding 2% this weekend for a $3.27 million weekend and a $32 million total. That’s a good number for a low-budget, faith-based film, and it will soon become Lionsgate’s highest-grossing movie of the year. That’s a rare win for a studio with a particularly horrible 2024.
Lower down the chart, Angel Studios’s Bonhoeffer lost a large chunk of its audience, with it making $2.4 million – a 60% decline from week one. The faith-based audience likely opted to see the more uplifting Best Christmas Pageant Ever instead. Its total domestic haul is just under $10 million. Venom: The Last Dance made $2.2 million in seventh place for a $137 million haul, which is disappointing for a superhero film but not disastrous either. Globally, it’s closing in on the $500 million mark. It will likely finish its run slightly ahead of Venom: Let There Be Carnage at the global box office, although that film was hampered by the pandemic.
In eighth place, A24’s Heretic continued to perform well, making $956K for a $26 million total. It might be able to crawl to $30 million. The Wild Robot is starting to wrap up its run in ninth place, making $670K, adding to its $142 million-plus total. A Real Pain rounded out the top ten, with $848k and a $6.1 million total. A low-budget charmer, this one should find a solid audience when it streams on Hulu sometime in the next few months.
Next weekend promises to be relatively quiet in terms new releases, so don’t expect much movement in the top five. What did you see this holiday weekend? Let us know in the comments!
