Eric Quinn

July 26 Once Upon A Time in Hollywood: Tarantino’s next film after Hateful Eight, the first away from Harvey Weinstein, and coming out after reports over how much of a tool the director is in real life (the Uma Thurman stuff), I'm quite confident in this film. For one, unless more allegations get thrown Tarantino’s way (or if Emilie Hirsch’s shady past gets brought up again), I have my doubts that much of what has been said will stick by the time this movie comes out (whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing is up to you). Second, having Leonardo DiCaprio as the lead will help generate buzz. Both Basterds and Django featured major starpower, which definitely helped them in the box office. Helps that Leo's selective, making each movie that features him an event. With it being the last major adult-oriented film of the season, I think this will do solid business for Sony and put Tarantino on the right foot (heh heh) now that he’s gone from Weinstein. 35/120 (3.43x)

July 19 The Lion King: Here we go baby. The mega star. The one film we’re all anticipating or dreading. To put things into perspective, Lion King is still one of Disney’s biggest hits in their history. It adjusts to $683.6M in just its original run, and its 3D re-release saw it clear $94.2M back in 2011, so this is obviously a big brand with evergreen appeal. Jon Favreau’s Jungle Book was a smash success, thanks to its incredible VFX technology, and Beauty and the Beast was an even bigger smash success, thanks to its capitalization on 90s nostalgia. Combine the two, and this leads to something majestic. The trailer’s already broken records online, and there seems like a genuine fervor and excitement for this production from audiences. But is this going to make $1B DOM? To be honest, I don’t even think it’ll be #1 for the year. Even with the VFX wizardry, there’s still the issue of whether or not audiences will just go for the exact same movie, only with a new coat of paint. Also doesn’t help that this is a stacked summer for family flicks. It’ll still make a buttload of money, but guys...calm down a bit. 210/620 (2.95x)

July 12 17 Bridges: Even with the Russos as producers, this will probably only hit Mile 22 numbers. Not that that’s a bad thing mind you (unless the film has a weirdly high budget). 15/40 (2.67x) Stuber: Another movie that will be lost in the crazy July shuffle. Funny enough, like 17 Bridges, this also stars an MCU actor. 10/35 (3.5x)

July 5 Annabelle 3: Annabelle: Creation managed to course-correct the franchise and make a movie people actually liked. This one is bringing in the Warrens, which will certainly excite Conjuring fans. Grudge doesn’t seem like it will go anywhere, and with summer weekdays, this will likely see a mild increase from Creation. 35/45/105 (3x, 2.33x) Spider-Man: Far From Home: Spider-Man is coming fresh off a banner year. Infinity War, the PS4 game, Venom, Into the Spider-Verse. People can’t get enough of the guy. People are also loving the MCU Spider-Man. Civil War and Homecoming were praised thanks to Spidey, while Infinity War and the “I don’t feel so good” scene made Tom Holland’s character both a meme and an icon, and people are excited to see this interpretation again. The film’s also taking place in Europe, which is a new and exciting location for the webslinger. And of course, there’s also Fishbowl Gyllenhaal. The one thing that might hold it back though its its competition. Lion King will be a far more formidable foe than Apes and Dunkirk, while Hobbs and Shaw ensures August will be bigger than 2017’s. But I feel like there will be enough of an OW boost that movie will at least stay close to the first movie’s total. 130/335 (2.58x)

Guess with 2019, y'all already know I'm down with Little Women and Chaos Walking. I'm also excited to see Native Son. Ashton Sanders is arguably the best out of all of his acting comrades his age, but Hollywood's too racist to give him work, so I hope this does well. Hoping Gemini Man works out too. Love me some Lee and I want Big Willie in a good movie again. Ford v Ferrarri should be cool too. Queen & Slim has potential to be epic, as does Knives Out. Del Toro Pinocchio will be sick too. And IX should be amazeballs (suck my dick, haters). I'm a basic bitch for anything Pixar, so I'm hype for Toy Story

This was the first year I actually saw a decent amount of movies from one calendar year (somewhere in the 70s. I might check out Bumblebee later in the afternoon). Of course, I forced myself to see stuff like The Kissing Booth and Life of the Party, so I missed a lot of the movies that BOT likes. Either way, the stuff that I liked was really good. Spider-Verse is potential movie of the decade material for me. ASIB is fantastic, as is Lean on Pete and Tully. Black Panther's still the best MCU movie and is still fantastic to me (suck my dick haters). Revenge is pretty cool. House w/ Clock was a pleasant surprise that I hope more people appreciate as much as I did. I'll see some of the other cool stuff BOT's recommended in a couple months.

@DeeCee @aabattery @Gamora We also need the deets from y'all

@WrathOfHan where's the last June weekend brah?

Having both Wonder Woman and Bond leaving November really makes the month feel empty and puts things out of wack.

June 28 47 Meters Down: Uncaged: The 2017 hit no one saw coming is getting a sequel. Legs were amazing for the first one, but it feels like it'll be a "one and done" for a lot of audience members. The plot description makes it seem like it's just the same movie again, and I don't think people loved the first movie that much to see a follow-up, especially with none of the original cast. Maybe a better OW, but don't expect it to reach the same total or have the same legs. 15/40 (2.67x) Limited Partners: Tiffany Haddish has a growing fanbase, while Rose Byrne has been in several hit films over the years. There also won’t be anything out for adult women specifically since The Hustle, so this should do well. Really depends on good reviews for it to cross 100M, but I’m optimistic that this will work as a counterprogramming flick. 28/95 (3.39x) Danny Boyle/Richard Curtis Comedy: This will probably be big in the UK. Not so sure about in the US. The whole concept of a guy being the only person who remembers The Beatles just seems niche and unappealing to us Yanks. It’s a great creative team-up though, and will probably live on as a cult classic. 18/55 (3.06x) Ford v Ferrari: Great cast, solid director, interesting premise. Has all of the components for a crowdpleasing summer adult drama. Feels like one of those sleeper hits few of us will see coming. 30/120 (4x)

Not true. I was very excited for Poppins, as a Blunt fan, musical fan, and Disney fan, and I was frustrated by all the doom and gloom over its OD, and even now ("WELL THE MOVIE ISN'T MAKING THAT MUCH MONEY YOU'RE JUST A STUPID IDIOT TRYING TO HIDE SOMETHING) Didn't help that it came from people like Johnny Tran, who has spouted vitriol on how "if it's RT score is that low, that must mean the movie's real bad", and Hades, who 98% of the time spouts obnoxious anti-Disney posts (yes, I have them on Ignore. No, that doesn't fix the problem). Hell, you were doing the exact same stuff I'm complaining about earlier ("Happy to see Poppins is floppin'. Always good when Disney bombs"). Guess it's okay for me to dog on Fantastic Beasts 3's performance in the future, right? 🙄

Back from Poppins. Now gotta do my last predix for the month. June 21 Child’s Play: Whatever executive at Orion Pictures decided to open this on the same day as Toy Story deserves a raise. Anyway, this seems like a real wildcard. The horror genre is killing the game, but most consider the Chucky franchise to be silly schlock. We got a straight-to-video sequel last year. However, this is a remake of the first film with a new cast, so it might get a new audience on board. Then again, Halloween showed that being a sequel can really help a film out. Just seems like a real hard one to pin down. Let’s just say an opening in the 30s and a total somewhere in the 70s to be safe. 33/72 (2.18x) Grudge: I don’t think there will be two horror films on the same day, but let’s just assume this happens. This is another old horror franchise that isn’t really all that well-remembered or looked at fondly. But I guess there will be an audience for this, even if Child’s Play might steal some of its attention. 20/50 (2.5x) Toy Story 4: Every time I see people (aka TOG being TOG) shouting that this will make less than 250M, I roll my eyes. Yes, Forky is weird. Yes, the teasers were overshadowed by Detective Pikachu. Yes, the third movie ended things perfectly. But the truth is, most audience members aren’t going to care. General audiences want to see characters they love in a new adventure, nostalgia will still be strong, and it is still Toy Story. It’s up there with Nemo and Incredibles in terms of Pixar brands, and it has a whole month to itself in terms of family films until The Lion King and to a lesser extent Far From Home, so it should have decent legs. It can also benefit from the fact that Toy Story 3 came out 9 years ago. At this point, the kids that saw the third movie in theaters are now grown up and would likely be interested in seeing a new adventure with characters they love. To say nothing of 90s kids who have children of their own. Just put out a killer trailer, and everything will be fine. Like I said with Pets, follow-ups to big animated movies see their finished total drop in the 20s from the last movie, so let’s just assume it loses about 25% from its adjusted number. It's been 9 years, so I think it's fair. (9 years. I was approaching middle school at that time. Christ, I’m old). 110/365 (3.32x)

Just getting out of the movie, I feel like part of it comes down to being the most complex number in the whole movie. Lasts five minutes with a whole bunch of choreography and staging. Whether or not the song's memorable, the scene in context certainly is.

Few movies this year gave me so much joy and happiness as MPR did. I wanna be in Lin Manuel-Miranda's biker gang.

Well at this point, if even a mild joke is "poisoning the well", maybe you should just not have CBM threads or discussion all together. These discussions offer very little value, and I've often felt like this place would be better without Marvel or DC threads. This is even more true considering the last few days. All the flame wars and the extra-sensitive fanboys surrounding them. If this site can't handle these movies, then maybe just take them away, or at the very least only just post their numbers and disallow any conversation about them. Besides, it's not like this is the only place on the Internet for CBM discussion.

Actually, I'm gonna defend @Nova for a minute. So @grim22 let me get this straight (ya know what, I'm just gonna call the whole mod team @aabattery @Spagspiria @Christmas baumer @DeeCee @Water Bottle @AndyLL) Lordmandeep has openly trolled Star Wars threads for the past year, bringing up how people hate Last Jedi at the slightest mention of anything. That's not even mentioning similar stuff he's been doing in the Captain Marvel thread. This stirring of the pot has been going on for years. A few threadbans, fewer suspensions, no ban. Napoleon has gone out of his way to troll MCU and the Fantastic Beasts threads, has tried to start fan wars and conspiracy theories multiple times, and has even stated that people who say anything negative about Zack Snyder should burn in hell. This stirring of the pot has been going on for years. Few threadbans, fewer suspensions, no ban. GraceRandolph has also started up flame wars, and has gone out of her way to attack DCEU fans, as well as Gaga fans. This has been going on for months. Few threadbans, no suspensions, no ban. But when Nova, a poster who has had zero infractions or trouble-causing and is generally well-liked by the community dares to make a mild joke about Aquaman's box office, he gets an instant threadban. Even after people like Manny G have gone on for days with concern trolling over both Poppins and Bumblebee. He gets nothing, while Nova has an instant slap on the wrist? Need I remind you that your guidelines state "no trolling allowed?" I'd at least be okay with Nova's threadban if you had harsher punishments for these figures and the stuff they've done, but you haven't. At most, you've given them a mild threadban, despite doing much, much worse for months, even years. Hell, why did I not get a threadban, when I did similar things on page 6 in the weekend thread? You're seriously gonna hit Nova over a harmless joke, when others have done far worse? Great priorities guys. Good to know you don't care about making this place a fun, non-toxic forum.

June 14 Men in Black International: The first trailer got a bit of an “eh” response. Most of the reactions are either “eh, this looks lame” or “eh, this looks fun”. But despite the more mellow reactions, this won’t implode as much as the previous Will Smith-less continuation of a 90s property with a Hemsworth brother starring. For one, although Men in Black was definitely sold on Will Smith’s charisma and personality, there’s still plenty more you can do with the MiB universe than you can with Independence Day. A sci-fi action comedy with cool aliens and decent one-liners can be repackaged to a new audience far better than another end-of-the-world apocalypse story. Helps that Men in Black is largely considered a better movie than the first Independence Day. Outside of that, F. Gary Gray is a good director, the cast is a lot of fun, and apart from Godzilla, which will already be out for a couple of weeks, and Dark Phoenix, which nobody cares about, this is the only major live-action tentpole of the month. That will help it stand out. It will be a good blockbuster for kids who have already seen Pets and Toy Story and for adults that are uninterested in the adventures of Woody and Buzz or Max and Duke. Ocean’s 8 numbers. 45/145 (3.22x) Shaft: The three Shaft generations is a great concept, and Tim Story’s done a couple good movies here and there before. Shaft is one of the more famous blaxploitation characters, so this will certainly do better than Superfly. Won’t be a massive hit, but it will find its audience. 20/50 (2.5x)

Enough about DP, let's talk about...DP. June 7 Dark Phoenix: Does anyone (outside of Arlborn) actually care about this? Does even Fox care about this? The FOX-Men movies are basically played out by this point. Its initial teaser was fine, but nothing all that earth-shattering. The FOX-Men are also expected to be dropped by the time this movie comes out in favor of the new MCU version. Then there’s so many other movies surrounding it with more buzz. Just seems like the interest is non-existent. Maybe summer weekdays will help it cross the century mark, but this will probably go sub-100M. 35/85 (2.43x) Flarsky: Moved to the summer due to good test screenings, the concept is certainly timely, and Seth Rogen still has his fans. I’m pretty hesitant on any straightforward comedy’s box office potential nowadays, but this should be a bright spot and a good counter-programmer. 25/80 (3.2x) The Secret Life of Pets 2: The first Pets was one of the biggest surprises when it comes to $100M openers. And it's still the highest opening for a completely original film. But the question is whether or not it can recreate that success for the sequel? While it is common for animated movie sequels to increase from their predecessors, including ones that were already huge hits, this one opened so high that it is a bit of a question mark, and there’s plenty of things that make me pessimistic over that happening. The character-focused trailers that have been coming out is certainly helpful in maintaining awareness for the film, and the first film was well-liked, generating solid legs. But despite the film being liked by audiences, it doesn’t really seem like the film was beloved or has stuck around in the same way as other popular movies have. Using another sequel to a 2016 film as an example, Crimes of Grindelwald showed that just because your first movie had good legs and solid word of mouth, that doesn’t mean your next movie is going to be an instant hit, especially if the new hook fails to appeal (of course it didn’t help that Grindelwald sucked, but still). Then again, I’m not 8 years old, so maybe what i'm saying is moot. It also doesn’t help that the film’s competition is a lot fiercer. Outside of Finding Dory, which was already playing for a month, the biggest direct threat to Pets was Ice Age 5, alongside indirect threats like Ghostbusters and Legend of Tarzan. This year, Pets will be surrounded by Aladdin and Toy Story, and to a lesser extent Godzilla, all of which are destined to make at least 80M+. That’s a problem. Follow-ups to monster animated movies typically drop in the 20s when it comes to total, so let’s just say around 21%. 90/285 (3.16x)

🤔

A few posts away, but love the Black Panther analysis. Hate that people are going all "oh it's just another Marvel movie" when it manages to tackle themes and ideas that are seldom explored in cinema, especially family action blockbusters. It's probably one of the riskier blockbusters this year, and maybe even last year.

Tele, put some clothes on.

We all know you're going to stan Sonic The Hedgehog to spite Pika Pika

I feel like I'm talking to a brick wall, but I'm just gonna give some defenses out real quick. Could Poppins and Bumblebee be doing better? Yes. Can they be viewed in the lens of being disappointments? Sure. But it's still important to recognize that these movies are still doing solid regardless. We may have overestimated Poppins, but it's seeing strong business. Good reviews, awards potential for Blunt, 200M+ gross. It's likely to finish at around 450M WW, possibly even 500M. Off a 130M budget, that's great. Even including marketing budgets, it's still likely to be profitable, especially since musicals get a lot of revenue from soundtrack sales and streaming. It's frustrating that people are still putting their heads in the sand because I made a stupid club and a lot of people agreed with what I had to say. And sure, Bumblebee's not doing amazing business, but was anyone really expecting it to? Apart from being a spin-off, it's coming off a slew of mediocre to bad installments. Age of Extinction suffered domestically due to these bad movies, while The Last Knight was practically rejected. Bumblebee was going to suffer the consequences no matter what. I haven't paid much attention to its international returns, but it should also make at least $350M, right? With a lower budget, this will see profits, but more importantly, good reviews will ensure better trust in the brand. What matters at this point is a good movie and, at worst, okay box office returns. I doubt the next Transformers movie will see a TDK explosion, but this is more importantly course correction, and will lead to potential increases for the upcoming sequel. So to all the people spouting doom and gloom here, could you do the forum a favor and please look at the glass half full for once? Just stop, smell the roses, and look at what the playing field is. I would say this will be my last post talking about this, but...I have my doubts people will listen.

He's probably still a pariah after all of his critical failures, making it hard for studios to be interested in having him back for bigger movies. Especially when his big-budget extravaganzas like Last Airbender and After Earth flopped. Can't handle 100M movies? Then you ain't worth shit. His name is also still considered somewhat of a joke to people less involved in the movie scene. Even after The Visit came out, I had friends and family unsure about Split being good solely because of the Shyamalan name. Although Glass could change things around. It's still low-budget, but if he's able to show that he can make a good tentpole-style release, I can see a studio signing him on to a bigger project he doesn't have to self-finance.