MONKEY MAN, THE FIRST OMEN, and SOMEONE LIKE YOU openings | April 5 to 7, 2024 weekend
Opening weekend box office, charts and commentary
The current weekend: April 5 to 7, 2024
1) Monkey Man opening
- This is a good opening for an original action thriller. The weekend figure is somewhat above average for the genre, with excellent critics’ reviews and very good audience scores (a B+ CinemaScore).
There are a lot of routine action thrillers with the same kinds of good guys, bad guys and conflicts. This is an original take featuring Dev Patel in an Indian story. It's ultra-violent, driven by class differences, corruption and personal vengeance. Foreign stories do not always work in North America; it's working here:
The movie was made in early 2021 for Netflix. Jordan Peele saw it, became a producer and brought it to the big screen under his Monkeypaw banner. It was not expensive to make (under $15m), and it's going to be very profitable.
2) The First Omen opening
- This is a weak start for the 5th episode of a horror series. Any horror series that gets to five episodes is in elite company. These are big films, opening to $21.1m. By that lofty standard, this is below average. Critics’ reviews are very good, while audience scores are flat (a C CinemaScore).
Other long-running horror series include Conjuring/Annabelle/Nun, Insidious, Evil Dead Rise, Scream, The Exorcist, and Saw, et al. The Omen has never been in the upper echelon at the BO. The last remake in 2006 was the biggest ($120m worldwide):
The Catholic clergy continues to play a leading role in horror films. Whenever God is called on to deal with evil, it's gonna get crazy. Is the clergy immune or at risk? Virtuous or corrupt? Who's pulling the strings? It's a provocative set-up, but in this case, the story covers little new ground.
3) Someone Like You opening
- This is a soft opening for an inspirational romance. Inspirational stories are doing well at the BO, but there haven't been many inspirational pure romances. I Still Believe opened to $9.1m in March 2020, and Redeeming Love opened to $3.5m in January 2022. For these films, romance is usually a subplot.
Compared with all romances, this is a small opening, on a targeted footprint of screens. Inspirational movies have limited potential overseas, as well:
Overall
- Monkey Man is the first of four well put-together original productions opening over the next four weeks. Civil War, then Ministry of Ungentlemanly War, then Challengers are next.
Meanwhile, the big sequels are doing good holdover business (Godzilla x Kong, Ghostbusters, Dune, Kung Fu Panda). This past week, the domestic BO was down approx. -8% compared with pre-pandemic levels — not a bad start to the month. Thus far in 2024, only Dune’s opening week was bigger.