Month: January 2025

16 Jan

Box Office Predictions: Wolf Man to have a howlingly good opening

By . FilmTV No Comments
Wolf Man, Leigh Whannell, monster

Blumhouse has had a lot of success opening horror movies in January. M3GAN was a blockbuster, as was Leigh Whannel’s The Invisible Man, and this year, they’ve got another horror flick that seems bound for a number-one finish. Indeed, Wolf Man, which also comes from Whannell, was initially one of the most anticipated horror titles of 2025. However, in recent weeks, the buzz around the film has cooled, with poor reactions to the movie’s new werewolf designs, and mixed reviews that revealed the film lacks scares and does away with a lot of the classic character’s lore.

Even still, the movie is set to dominate the box office, although its opening seems to be more in line with last year’s Night Swim ($12 million) than either M3GAN ($30.4 million) or The Invisible Man ($28 million). As such, I’m expecting Wolf Man will open with about $17 million, which, given its rumoured $25 million budget, will no doubt make it quite profitable for Universal and Blumhouse.

Last week’s champ, Den of Thieves 2: Pantera, should slide into second place with about $9 million, which would help drive it to a final tally in line with the $44 million the original made. Of course, Mufasa: The Lion King, could overtake it and finish in second place, although I’m thinking it will hit about $7 million this weekend. The Keke Palmer/ SZA vehicle, One of Them Days, should slide into fourth place with about $5 million, while Nosferatu should be right behind it with $4 million as it closes in on $100 million domestically. Expanding Oscar films, including The Brutalist and September 5 should have solid runs that will put them on the bottom half of the chart. 

Overall, this seems to be relatively quiet given that it’s a holiday weekend (Monday is Martin Luther King Day) so it’s possible that if Wolf Man underperforms, one of the Christmas holdovers, like A Complete Unknown or Nosferatu might get a surprising boost at the box office. We’ll keep you posted as the weekend goes on!

Our Predictions:

  1. Wolf Man: $17 Million
  2. Den of Thieves 2: Pantera: $9 million
  3. Mufasa: The Lion King: $7 million
  4. One of Them Days: $5 million
  5. Nosferatu: $4 million

The post Box Office Predictions: Wolf Man to have a howlingly good opening appeared first on JoBlo.

16 Jan

Box Office Predictions: Wolf Man to have a howlingly good opening

By . FilmTV No Comments
Wolf Man, Leigh Whannell, monster

Blumhouse has had a lot of success opening horror movies in January. M3GAN was a blockbuster, as was Leigh Whannel’s The Invisible Man, and this year, they’ve got another horror flick that seems bound for a number-one finish. Indeed, Wolf Man, which also comes from Whannell, was initially one of the most anticipated horror titles of 2025. However, in recent weeks, the buzz around the film has cooled, with poor reactions to the movie’s new werewolf designs, and mixed reviews that revealed the film lacks scares and does away with a lot of the classic character’s lore.

Even still, the movie is set to dominate the box office, although its opening seems to be more in line with last year’s Night Swim ($12 million) than either M3GAN ($30.4 million) or The Invisible Man ($28 million). As such, I’m expecting Wolf Man will open with about $17 million, which, given its rumoured $25 million budget, will no doubt make it quite profitable for Universal and Blumhouse.

Last week’s champ, Den of Thieves 2: Pantera, should slide into second place with about $9 million, which would help drive it to a final tally in line with the $44 million the original made. Of course, Mufasa: The Lion King, could overtake it and finish in second place, although I’m thinking it will hit about $7 million this weekend. The Keke Palmer/ SZA vehicle, One of Them Days, should slide into fourth place with about $5 million, while Nosferatu should be right behind it with $4 million as it closes in on $100 million domestically. Expanding Oscar films, including The Brutalist and September 5 should have solid runs that will put them on the bottom half of the chart. 

Overall, this seems to be relatively quiet given that it’s a holiday weekend (Monday is Martin Luther King Day) so it’s possible that if Wolf Man underperforms, one of the Christmas holdovers, like A Complete Unknown or Nosferatu might get a surprising boost at the box office. We’ll keep you posted as the weekend goes on!

Our Predictions:

  1. Wolf Man: $17 Million
  2. Den of Thieves 2: Pantera: $9 million
  3. Mufasa: The Lion King: $7 million
  4. One of Them Days: $5 million
  5. Nosferatu: $4 million

The post Box Office Predictions: Wolf Man to have a howlingly good opening appeared first on JoBlo.

16 Jan

Wolf Man and Kraven The Hunter star Christopher Abbott gives his impression on Kraven underperforming

By . FilmTV No Comments

Christopher Abbott has some big hairy shoes to fill as he follows the likes of Lon Chaney Jr. and Benicio Del Toro in his new film Wolf Man. The new Blumhouse horror movie from the director of The Invisible Man remake takes a similar route in reimagining the story of the Universal monster classic. Abbott would already be featured in a film recently where man and beast have a kinship — Kraven The Hunter, Sony’s latest offering in their Spider-Man villain solo series. Kraven, although it didn’t look like the trainwreck Madam Web nor Morbius was, still became Sony’s lowest-grossing Marvel movie.

Abbott would sit down with The Hollywood Reporter to promote Wolf Man when they inquired about the roll of the dice on movies like Kraven. Abbott responded,

Yeah, you never know, man. Absolutely. That’s the thing. This business is inherently the most collaborative art, and, essentially, the most expensive. So there’s a lot of cooks in the kitchen, sometimes, and whether that’s the actors, the director or whoever else is around, it takes a village.”

Abbott played The Foreigner in Kraven and his co-star, The Brutalist‘s Alessandro Nivola was dumbfounded with what happened with the studio’s dealings with the filmmakers as his experience was actually quite pleasant. Nivola attested, “I really don’t know what happened behind the scenes. On these kinds of movies, you hear about all the wranglings at the studio, and maybe there were too many chefs. I don’t know. I don’t know enough about what the process was beyond just my experience of being on set, which was really joyful.” 

While Nivola got to turn into a rhino in Kraven, in the film Wolf Man, Abbott makes the famous metamorphosis into a wolf. In this incarnation, while the make-up was there to help him immerse himself into the creature, he also talks about using his body language in the prolonged process that the movie takes in transitioning him from man to beast. Abbott explained, “Yeah, the progression is very gradual in this movie, so being able to play with how much he progresses was really interesting. It starts with just the fingers, and then it eventually just works its way up through the arms and the rest of the body. So there was a lot to keep track of, but it’s fun to play with physicality like that.”

The post Wolf Man and Kraven The Hunter star Christopher Abbott gives his impression on Kraven underperforming appeared first on JoBlo.

16 Jan

Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu remake gets a VOD release next week

By . FilmTV No Comments

The Witch, The Lighthouse, and The Northman writer/director Robert Eggers‘ remake of F.W. Murnau’s 1922 silent classic Nosferatu (watch it HERE) made its way out into theatres last month and has stirred up a lot of positive reactions, with JoBlo’s own Chris Bumbray even describing the film as a new horror classic in his 10/10 review. The film has been doing well at the box office, earning almost $137 million at the global box office so far, and it’s expected to reach the $100 million mark at the domestic box office by the time its theatrical run has come to an end… but soon, viewers will be able to check it out in the comfort of their own homes, as When to Stream reports that Nosferatu will be receiving a VOD and digital release next week, on January 21st.

An unofficial adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the original Nosferatu has the following synopsis: In this highly influential silent horror film, the mysterious Count Orlok (Max Schreck) summons Thomas Hutter (Gustav von Wangenheim) to his remote Transylvanian castle in the mountains. The eerie Orlok seeks to buy a house near Hutter and his wife, Ellen (Greta Schroeder). After Orlok reveals his vampire nature, Hutter struggles to escape the castle, knowing that Ellen is in grave danger. Meanwhile Orlok’s servant, Knock (Alexander Granach), prepares for his master to arrive at his new home. Werner Herzog directed his own remake of the film in 1979. Murnau’s film had a running time of 94 minutes and Herzog’s is 107 minutes long, so Eggers’ 132 minute version is substantially longer than its predecessors.

Eggers’ take on Nosferatu is a gothic tale of obsession between a haunted young woman in 19th century Germany and the ancient Transylvanian vampire who stalks her, bringing untold horror with him.

The cast includes Willem Dafoe (Spider-Man: No Way Home) as crazy vampire hunter Von Franz, Lily-Rose Depp (The Idol) as Ellen Hutter and Nicholas Hoult (Renfield) as her husband Thomas – a role Bill Skarsgard was going to play at one point. Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Bullet Train) is in there as Thomas’s friend Friedrich Harding, with Emma Corrin (The Crown) as Friedrich’s wife Anna, Ralph Ineson (The Witch) as Von Franz’s cohort Dr. Wilhelm Sievers, and Simon McBurney (The Conjuring 2) as Herr Knock, Thomas’s employer. Bill Skarsgard (Stephen King’s It) is the title character and has said that playing Nosferatu / Count Orlok was like “conjuring pure evil. It took a while for me to shake off the demon that had been conjured inside of me. … I do not think people are gonna recognize me in it.“

Will you be watching Nosferatu when it gets a VOD release next week? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

The post Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu remake gets a VOD release next week appeared first on JoBlo.

16 Jan

Criterion announces Anora for release; could it be the Oscar push it needs?

By . FilmTV No Comments
criterion anora

The Criterion Collection has announced their April slate of discs, with one soon-to-be Oscar nominee, Anora, among the titles. Unveiled as spine #1259, Anora could see a little push from voters, especially as voting has been pushed back to January 17th due to the ongoing fires in Los Angeles. While Anora won’t actually see the streets until April 29th, the announcement alone could give it even more prestige for voters.

Anora wouldn’t be the first time that Criterion announced titles that neatly coincided with the Academy Awards. Two of the biggest stand-outs of recent years were The Grand Budapest Hotel and Parasite, with Wes Anderson’s film being revealed in January when Academy Award nominations are traditionally announced and Bong Joon-ho’s picture being promoted just a few days before final voting closed.

Of course, there’s no real scientific proof that Criterion is trying to give Anora a little boost with Oscar voters – and voting was originally set to close on January 12th, days before the announcement – but there’s no harm in letting the buzz generate through the home video aficionados that still remain in Hollywood, especially when the movie has slipped by most barometers. Remember, both The Grand Budapest Hotel and Parasite each took home four Oscars, with the latter winning Best Picture – the label knows what they’re doing. Voting for the Academy Awards is currently scheduled for February 18th with the ceremony itself on March 2nd.

Here is The Criterion Collection’s official synopsis for Anora: “Contemporary cinema’s foremost chronicler of American dreamers and schemers hustling on the margins of capitalist promise, Sean Baker, reaches new heights of mastery with this audacious anti–Cinderella story—a whirlwind neorealist screwball comedy with an aching heart. In an electric, star-is-born performance, Mikey Madison soars as Anora, an enterprising, ferociously foulmouthed Brooklyn erotic dancer and sex worker whose Prince Not-So-Charming comes along in the form of a Russian oligarch’s wild-child son (Mark Eydelshteyn). This is the beginning of a fractured fairy tale—also featuring standout performances from Karren Karagulian, Yura Borisov, and Vache Tovmasyan—that turns the cruel realities of class inside out. Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, Anora confirms Baker as one of our preeminent auteurs.”

criterion anora 2

Special features on this Criterion Collection release include a 4K digital remaster supervised by Anora director Sean Baker and producer Alex Coco, along with two commentaries, a making-of documentary, interviews with Baker and star Mikey Madison, footage from the Cannes Film Festival press conference, a Q&A with Madison and actor-stripper Lindsey Normington, deleted scenes, and trailers. The cover art by Bianca Parkes and GrandSon plays off of the poster for Jesús Franco’s Vampyros Lesbos

Other films in Criterion Collection’s April slate include Baker’s own Prince of Broadway (Criterion also released Baker’s Take Out in 2022), Julian Schnabel’s Basquiat and 4K re-releases of Chungking Express and Some Like It Hot.

The post Criterion announces Anora for release; could it be the Oscar push it needs? appeared first on JoBlo.

16 Jan

Criterion announces Anora for release; could it be the Oscar push it needs?

By . FilmTV No Comments
criterion anora

The Criterion Collection has announced their April slate of discs, with one soon-to-be Oscar nominee, Anora, among the titles. Unveiled as spine #1259, Anora could see a little push from voters, especially as voting has been pushed back to January 17th due to the ongoing fires in Los Angeles. While Anora won’t actually see the streets until April 29th, the announcement alone could give it even more prestige for voters.

Anora wouldn’t be the first time that Criterion announced titles that neatly coincided with the Academy Awards. Two of the biggest stand-outs of recent years were The Grand Budapest Hotel and Parasite, with Wes Anderson’s film being revealed in January when Academy Award nominations are traditionally announced and Bong Joon-ho’s picture being promoted just a few days before final voting closed.

Of course, there’s no real scientific proof that Criterion is trying to give Anora a little boost with Oscar voters – and voting was originally set to close on January 12th, days before the announcement – but there’s no harm in letting the buzz generate through the home video aficionados that still remain in Hollywood, especially when the movie has slipped by most barometers. Remember, both The Grand Budapest Hotel and Parasite each took home four Oscars, with the latter winning Best Picture – the label knows what they’re doing. Voting for the Academy Awards is currently scheduled for February 18th with the ceremony itself on March 2nd.

Here is The Criterion Collection’s official synopsis for Anora: “Contemporary cinema’s foremost chronicler of American dreamers and schemers hustling on the margins of capitalist promise, Sean Baker, reaches new heights of mastery with this audacious anti–Cinderella story—a whirlwind neorealist screwball comedy with an aching heart. In an electric, star-is-born performance, Mikey Madison soars as Anora, an enterprising, ferociously foulmouthed Brooklyn erotic dancer and sex worker whose Prince Not-So-Charming comes along in the form of a Russian oligarch’s wild-child son (Mark Eydelshteyn). This is the beginning of a fractured fairy tale—also featuring standout performances from Karren Karagulian, Yura Borisov, and Vache Tovmasyan—that turns the cruel realities of class inside out. Winner of the Palme d’Or at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, Anora confirms Baker as one of our preeminent auteurs.”

criterion anora 2

Special features on this Criterion Collection release include a 4K digital remaster supervised by Anora director Sean Baker and producer Alex Coco, along with two commentaries, a making-of documentary, interviews with Baker and star Mikey Madison, footage from the Cannes Film Festival press conference, a Q&A with Madison and actor-stripper Lindsey Normington, deleted scenes, and trailers. The cover art by Bianca Parkes and GrandSon plays off of the poster for Jesús Franco’s Vampyros Lesbos

Other films in Criterion Collection’s April slate include Baker’s own Prince of Broadway (Criterion also released Baker’s Take Out in 2022), Julian Schnabel’s Basquiat and 4K re-releases of Chungking Express and Some Like It Hot.

The post Criterion announces Anora for release; could it be the Oscar push it needs? appeared first on JoBlo.

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