How to Be a Latin Lover hits stateside screens next weekend and it’s not out of the realm of possibility that it could be a decent sleeper hit. The rom com stars Eugenio Derbez, who’s a massive movie star in Latin America. Lover boasts a supporting cast of recognizable faces including Salma Hayek, Rob Lowe, Kristen Bell, Michael Cera, Raquel Welch, and Rob Riggle.
In 2013, Derbez directed and starred in Instructions Not Included, which shocked domestic box office prognosticators when it made nearly $8 million on only 347 screens. It eventually made $44M in the U.S. Lover is bound to be a huge hit in Mexico when it premieres on May 5.
I don’t quite expect Instructions numbers here. Then again, no one saw Instructions coming either. I’ll say it manages between $5-possibly $7 million for a respectable showing.
How to Be a Latin Lover opening weekend prediction: $6.3 million
I’m not sure I could have written this post a year ago.
It was an early Thursday afternoon on April 21st last year when I got a call from a colleague. A body had been found at Paisley Park. Those were the extent of the details known at that moment.
I remembered nearly seven years earlier that TMZ had been the first entity to report the news of Michael Jackson’s passing. They had it before CNN and the AP, etc…
My thought process immediately had me typing in that website to see what was happening. And there it was. Prince was dead.
For me, this was not your typical announcement of a celebrity’s passing. It was far more than that. To those who read this blog, you know I’m a huge movie fan, as well as a music lover. We all are in our own way (at least most of us).
As I’ve stated before on here, there are casual movie watchers and there are casual listeners of the songs playing on the radio. And good for you! I’m not wired that way. From a young age, I was transfixed by the world of film and continue to be right now.
When it comes to music, I come from a family that loves it. From hearing James Brown and Ray Charles and Chuck Berry from my dad to hearing the pop icons of the 1980s like Michael Jackson and Madonna and so many others from my older siblings, it’s always been part of my life. When the music of the early to mid 1990s was popular in my formative years, I was right there along with it. Mildly obsessive about it. The exploding genre of hip hop music at the time was a gold mine of greatness. Artists like Dr. Dre and Snoop Doggy Dogg and Wu-Tang Clan and 2Pac and Biggie and Outkast. Bands like Nirvana that upset the apple cart of rock and roll. Even the 90s R&B artists like Boyz II Men and TLC and Mariah Carey were busy spinning their gems on my CDs (which at that time was best kept in a giant case you lugged around everywhere).
And then there was Prince. As much as I adored all the aforementioned artists and bands and many more that I haven’t mentioned, Prince Rogers Nelson was and is in a category by himself. This applies to the man as an artist in general and what he meant to a young kid growing up in Northwest Ohio.
On the day he died, I wrote this on Facebook:
It’s difficult to describe what it’s like when you feel a connection with an artist. My brother and sister Troy Thatcher and Dawn Hammer are responsible for allowing me as a young lad to grow up listening to Prince. I saw him in concert 14 times and it was a connection shared with my siblings and sister in law Nicole. I remember certain times according to which albums of his were out. Young years with Purple Rain, Sign O The Times and Batman. Grade school jamming to the Diamonds and Pearls and Symbol album. High school parties putting on P. Control. My high school graduation cake had a rendering of Prince on it. It is honestly a family bond that my brother and sisters and I share together. Because of him. You know how those security questions ask you favorite musician? I’ll give you one guess. His creativity and his musical talent is in a class of its own. He is the greatest live performer… Period. For those not as familiar with his music, just pay attention to what other musicians say about him today. He had given me hours and hours and hours of joy, both on stage and with earbuds in. Some of my greatest memories with people I love involve Prince. He taught me growing up that being creative and even a little strange and different from your peers is cool. I love the genius that is Prince. There’s no past tense. His legacy and his music and his influence will go on forever.
That explains it pretty well. There have been a number of days over my life dedicated to watching Prince perform live. In Columbus. In Cleveland. In Detroit. In Las Vegas. In high school, his albums The Gold Experience, Chaos and Disorder, and Emancipation were released. No matter what was happening that day, I’m confident all I could think about was getting to the music store and buying them. I remember in grade school and junior high is when Diamonds and Pearls and the Symbol album were giving us classics like “Cream”, “Gett Off”, “My Name is Prince”, “Seven”, and “Sexy MF”. To a 12 and 13 year-old, this stuff was risque, funky, and I couldn’t stop listening. Even at that age, I also knew it was genius. It was really that era that caused me to look back at his past releases, which is rightly considered the golden era of his discography. You know, stuff like Dirty Mind, 1999, Purple Rain, Parade, and Sign O The Times. It was then I realized why my brother and sister loved him so much in the 1980s.
The first time I saw him in concert was December 27, 1997. This is the setlist from the show in Auburn Hills:
Note that he did two encores and played 34 songs. I was transfixed from the moment he walked out onstage. As mentioned in my Facebook post, he was the greatest live performer to ever grace a stage.
The last time I saw him was November 10, 2006 in Las Vegas at the Rio Hotel on the second night of a residency that went on for months.
It was a smaller venue and we were right up against the stage. During a guitar solo, I will sheepishly confess that I may have taken the opportunity to give him a friendly pat on the leg while he ripped away on the chords. There was also a moment during a guitar solo where he bent down and came face to face with my sister. I thought she was going to faint.
So… there was a family connection with Prince. With my sister and brother especially. Everyone in high school growing up knew I was rather obsessed with him as well. At the time, he was going by that unpronounceable symbol that I used to constantly doodle on my notebooks. O ( + >
And at that time especially… he was considered pretty damn weird. He was not at the peak of his record sales. That time had passed. He had confounded many fans with the name change. In some ways, I’m almost glad I wasn’t at an age during the Purple Rain era where I would have followed him religiously. To me, the era where he came most vividly into my consciousness was just as important. I was able to cherish what he’d done before and breathlessly look forward to what was next. To me, the name change wasn’t that bizarre. And years later, recognizing that he basically did it to get out of a record contract he deemed unfair adds to the cool factor of the whole thing.
So let’s go back, shall we? He was considered pretty damn weird. I know I didn’t realize it at the time, but we all feel pretty weird in our teens. And here was a guy that embraced his persona and didn’t seem to care what anyone thought of him. He was around to make amazing music and play it live better than anyone else.
Here was someone who could somehow and someway pull off wearing high heels and make every woman desire him (at 5’2″ no less!). Here was someone whose beef with his record company is that they wouldn’t let him release more music. How cool is that? Here is someone who embraced (and later rejected) the Internet as a source of releasing his material. He was way ahead of his time in that respect.
Prince is someone who could balance funk, rock and roll, ballads, R&B, and about every other genre all into one album and it was shockingly brilliant.
In junior high and high school, I didn’t fully know it. Yet he was an inspiration. He was an inspiration to be yourself. He was inspiration to embrace a weird idea that being a 16 year-old more into writing movie reviews than being into sports was actually cool. And it helped me embrace the way I was at the time and am today.
So… in case you can’t tell, I’m more than just a casual Prince fan.
On April 20, 2016 – if you’d told me I’d be visiting Paisley Park in the fall, I would have said you’re crazy. And then April 21st happened. This led to his recording studio and home in Chanhassen, Minnesota being turned into a museum. In November of last year, my sister and I found ourselves inside Prince’s inner sanctum. We saw all three of his recording studios, his two concert venues inside the facility where he would entertain, and even his Ping Pong table. Everywhere you looked there were gold and platinum albums. And the first item we saw was a miniature model of Paisley Park located in the Atrium where his ashes are contained inside a small purple box. It was emotional and it was also a joyous celebration of his existence.
Prince died too young. The circumstances of his passing are truly sad. I have found myself on several evenings since April 21st with my earbuds in reminding myself of his work. I have found myself glued to YouTube now that it’s not too difficult to find videos and concert footage. I have smiled at the realization that some of the concert footage (Detroit 2004, performance of “DMSR”) is from a show I was at.
I remember in high school, some of my friends thought it was weird that I was so into Prince… or The Artist Formerly Known as Prince at that juncture. There was some teasing here and there. I couldn’t help it. At that vulnerable teenage time, I think I even got into little arguments with them: “But he’s so great!! You don’t understand!”
The funny part is… I’ve talked to some of my peers that may have teased and joked with me back then. To a person, they pretty much now say – “Ugh, you were right!”
I don’t say that to pound my chest at all. It has nothing to do with me. As I see it, it just took some folks a little while to realize how amazing Prince is.
And we saw how much people loved him on April 21st last year. Some of the tributes were remarkable. Many of them were more poetic and musically beautiful than anything I could create.
Creativity is what fueled Prince. His creativity created a body of work that has entertained and entranced millions around the world. In my case, Prince helped teach me that being creative and a little weird sometimes in is OK. In fact, it’s more than OK. As I said a year ago, it’s cool.
And Prince was the coolest inspiration this guy could have.
Next weekend brings the techno thriller TheCircle, based on a 2013 bestseller by Dave Eggers. The pic casts Emma Watson as an employee at a powerful Internet corporation where everything is not as it seems. There’s some other heavy hitters among the cast: Tom Hanks, John Boyega of the new StarWars trilogy, Patton Oswalt and Bill Paxton in his final film appearance.
The source material in which it’s based has its fans. It also doesn’t hurt that Watson is fresh off the mega blockbuster BeautyandtheBeast (and Hanks never hurts either). TheFateoftheFurious should still manage a three-peat in this final April weekend, but I have a feeling TheCircle has a better chance of over performing than underperforming.
I’ll predict a mid teens to high teens debut is likely.
TheCircle opening weekend prediction: $16.3 million
For my How to Be a Latin Lover prediction, click here:
Garth Davis’s Lion, simply by the nature of its true origins, is both heartwarming and heart wrenching. Yet this doesn’t completely excuse some faults in the rendering of its tale. It tells the incredible story of Saroo (Sunny Pawar), a five-year old boy circa 1986 in a poor Indian village who becomes separated from his mother (Divian Ladwa) and older brother Guddu (Abhishek Bharate) one fateful evening.
The lost journey leads the child many miles away in Calcutta where Saroo is placed in an orphanage that is more like a prison. He doesn’t know the language of the new land he’s stranded in and knows his mother only as “mum”. One of the amazing realizations while viewing Lion is the remembrance of lack of technology in the 1980s that basically made it impossible for Saroo to be reunified with his family.
While Calcutta couldn’t be more of a foreign land to him, he’s soon taken to a much more faraway land in Australia when a kind couple (David Wenham and Nicole Kidman) adopt him. They treat him well and he’s a good kid, which isn’t the case with the troubled second child they adopt a year after Saroo.
The film eventually flashes forward to 20 years later and Saroo is now played by Dev Patel. In his late 20s, he still resides in Australia and is embarking on a career in hotel management. Lucy (Rooney Mara) is his American girlfriend. He’s still close with his adoptive parents (though not without some complications) and there’s still issues with his younger brother. The memories of his former life still consume him, however. A chance suggestion of Google Earth now having the ability to possibly locate his Indian village feeds his obsession.
Thus begins Saroo’s journey home. While he focuses myopically on finding his long-lost mother and brother, it has dramatic consequences with the current individuals in his life. Lion‘s plot is inherently fascinating. The screenplay by Luke Davies succeeds better in exploring some relationships than others. Saroo and Lucy’s is rather uninteresting, while his dynamic with Kidman provides some fine moments. Kidman’s mother is complicated and caring and the actress gives a touching performance. The same can be said for both versions of Saroo with Patel and Pawar.
When Lion reaches its conclusion with a moment we’ve been pining for, it is powerful and includes some unexpected revelations. An epilogue left me curious as to whether a documentary about the subjects may have been more potent. The answer is probably yes, but the picture does a competent and admirable job of telling a remarkable story.
Well this wasn’t easy! Prince had nearly 40 studio albums in a career that didn’t even span 40 years. Pretty much every release he put out has at least three (in most cases more) genuinely great tracks.
Yet for those looking for the starter kit on his cream of the crop works, here’s my personal top 10 Prince Albums of All Time:
Key Tracks: “Anna Stesia”, “Alphabet St”, “Glam Slam”, “When 2R In Love”, “I Wish U In Heaven”
8. Around the World in a Day (1985)
Key Tracks: “Raspberry Beret”, “Pop Life”, “Paisley Park”, “America”, “Condition of the Heart”, “The Ladder”
7. The Gold Experience (1995)
Key Tracks: “Dolphin”, “Gold”, “(Eye) Hate U”, “P. Control”, “Endorphinmachine”, “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World”
6. Dirty Mind (1980)
Key Tracks: “When You Were Mine”, “Uptown”, “Dirty Mind”, “Head”, “Partyup”, “Gotta Broken Heart Again”
5. The Symbol Album (1992)
Key Tracks: “Seven”, “My Name is Prince”, “Sexy MF”, “The Morning Papers”, “The Max”, “Damn U”, “The Continental”, “Love 2 the 9’s”
4. Parade (1986)
Key Tracks: “Kiss”, “Sometimes It Snows in April”, “Mountains”, “Anotherloverholenyohead”, “Girls and Boys”, “New Position”, “Under the Cherry Moon”
3. 1999 (1982)
Key Tracks: “1999”, “Little Red Corvette”, “Delirious”, “DMSR”, “Something in the Water (Does Not Compute)”, “Let’s Pretend We’re Married”, “Free”, “Lady Cab Driver”, “International Lover”
2. Purple Rain (1984)
Key Tracks: All of them… “Let’s Go Crazy”, “Take Me With U”, “The Beautiful Ones”, “Computer Blue”, “Darling Nikki”, “When Doves Cry”, “I Would Die 4 U”, “Baby, I’m a Star”, “Purple Rain”
1. “Sign o’ The Times”
Key Tracks: “Sign o’ the Times”, “Housequake”, “The Ballad of Dorothy Parker”, “U Got the Look”, “Forever in My Life”, “Adore”, “Hot Thing”, “Strange Relationship”, “The Cross”, “If I Was Your Girlfriend”, “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man”, “Starfish and Coffee”, “Slow Love”
As we approach the one year anniversary of Prince’s death on Friday, this evening I’m giving you five performances that remind us what a brilliant and one of a kind live performer he was:
It is one busy post Easter weekend at the box office as six films roll out in wide or semi release. They are: romantic thriller Unforgettable with Katherine Heigl and Rosario Dawson, DisneyNature production Born in China, Armenian Genocide drama The Promise with Christian Bale and Oscar Isaac, found footage horror pic Phoenix Forgotten, British action-comedy Free Fire, and period piece adventure The Lost City of Z with Charlie Hunnam and Robert Pattinson. You can peruse my detailed prediction posts on each of them here:
Before we get to the newbies, one thing seems for certain: The Fate of the Furious will easily repeat at #1 after its near $100M opening over Easter (more on that below). I foresee a drop in the mid 50s for it.
I see Unforgettable having little troubleplacing highest among the debuts for a decent second place showing. Then it’s family holdovers The Boss Baby and Beauty and the Beast in third and fourth with Born in China rounding out the top five.
And here’s where it gets really interesting! I’m not expecting much out of Phoenix Forgotten or The Promise and have them opening in range with where Smurfs: The Lost Village and Going in Style should be at in their third weekends. I also believe The Lost City of Z will do fairly well on only 500 screens and actually have it in sixth. Bottom line: for the numbers 6-10, I have them separated by only half a million bucks.
Notice I didn’t mention Free Fire. That’s because I actually have it outside the top ten at $2.3M (which would probably put it 11th). That said, I’ve yet to screen a theater count for it and that could change the dynamic.
So… lots to chew on this weekend and here’s a projected top ten:
1. The Fate of the Furious
Predicted Gross: $43.2 million (representing a drop of 56%)
2. Unforgettable
Predicted Gross: $12.9 million
3. The Boss Baby
Predicted Gross: $9.2 million (representing a drop of 43%)
4. Beauty and the Beast
Predicted Gross: $7.8 million (representing a drop of 43%)
5. Born in China
Predicted Gross: $5.2 million
6. The Lost City of Z
Predicted Gross: $3.7 million
7. Smurfs: The Lost Village
Predicted Gross: $3.6 million (representing a drop of 47%)
8. Going in Style
Predicted Gross: $3.5 million (representing a drop of 45%)
9. Phoenix Forgotten
Predicted Gross: $3.4 million
10. The Promise
Predicted Gross: $3.2 million
Box Office Results (April 14-16)
The Fate of the Furious did manage to score the second highest April opening ever and the second highest debut of the franchise, though it did come in quite a bit under my expectations. Fate made $98.7 million, just topping the $97.3M achieved by Fast & Furious 6 (and well under the series pinnacle of $147.1M that Furious 7 did). While well below my $122.7 million projection, it’s still a solid opening that should leave the Fast brand in good order.
The Boss Baby dropped to second with $16 million (I said $15M) for a $116M tally with Beauty and the Beast in third at $13.7 million (I said $14.6M) for a $454M overall haul.
Smurfs: The Lost Village continued its ho-hum run in fourth with $6.7 million (I said $7.8M) in its sophomore frame for just a $24M total. Going in Style, also in weekend #2, rounded out the top five with $6.2 million (I went with $7.2M) for $23M overall.
Finally, Gifted expanded in theater count and was sixth with $3 million, under my $4.6M forecast.
James Gray’s The Lost City of Z opens in semi wide release this weekend after a pretty impressive debut in very limited fashion over Easter weekend. The pic tells the true story of explorer Percy Fawcett (Charlie Hunnam) in the Amazon in the early 20th century. Costars include Robert Pattinson, Sienna Miller, and Tom Holland.
Z closed the New York Film Festival last fall to positive word of mouth and it stands at 88% currently on Rotten Tomatoes. It grossed over $100,000 on just 4 screens this last weekend and is slated to expand to approximately 500 on Friday.
I believe this could perform similarly to The Place Beyond the Pines four years ago. Though there’s no obvious comparison between the two titles, both appeal to a more adult audience and received encouraging critical reaction. Pines made $3.8 million when it hit around 500 theaters. If Z accomplishes the same, that means I have it out doingThe Promise, Phoenix Forgotten, and Free Fire in their debuts.
The Lost City of Z opening weekend prediction: $3.7 million
This Friday, British action-comedy Free Fire hits theaters stateside after it’s already premiered in the U.K. Ben Wheatley’s effort debuted last fall at the Toronto Film Festival to decent buzz and it stands at 81% currently on Rotten Tomatoes. Oscar winner Brie Larson (fresh off Kong: Skull Island) headlines along with Sharlto Copley, Armie Hammer, Cillian Murphy, and Jack Reynor.
While the pic may garner some interest from fanboys based on its mostly positive word of mouth, the marketing campaign for Free Fire has been minimal. I don’t yet have a theater count for it, which makes this prediction a little tough (and I could revise it when that count is revealed).
Regardless, I see a low opening here and it’s best hope is likely gaining a cult following once it’s release for home viewing.
Free Fire opening weekend prediction: $2.3 million
It’s being described as The Blair Witch Project, but with aliens. Phoenix Forgotten debuts in approximately 1500 theaters this Friday and it tells the true life story of strange lights that appeared over the title city some 20 years ago.
The found footage horror flick has a cast of unknowns. In fact, the biggest name involved is producer Ridley Scott, who’s clearly in extraterrestrial mode as his Alien: Covenant hits theaters next month.
Expectations for Forgotten are considerably lower. The pic has received little fanfare or buzz and I expect a very forgetful debut. It may even hold the unfortunate designation of having the lowest opening of any of the six titles hitting theaters in wide release or semi wide release this weekend, though I’ll say Free Fire and possibly The Lost City of Z get below it. And who knows? Maybe The Promise as well… this weekend is tough!
Phoenix Forgotten opening weekend prediction: $3.4 million
