Shailene Woodley and company are back next weekend in The Divergent Series: Allegiant, the third entry in the YA adaptations from author Veronica Roth. The dystopian sci fi pic arrives in the same March slot as its predecessors, 2014’s Divergent and last year’s Insurgent. Director Robert Schwentke is back behind the camera and costars include Theo James, Miles Teller, Ansel Elgort, Naomi Watts, Jeff Daniels, Octavia Spencer, and Zoe Kravitz.
Second installment Insurgent saw a slight dip from the first entry. While Divergent debuted to $54 million and eventually grossed $150M domestic, Insurgent opened at $52 million with an overall $130M tally. Reviews for Allegiant haven’t been kind… it sits at 0% currently on Rotten Tomaotes and I look for its returns to continue diminishing. Even the third and fourth Hunger Games pics saw dips from the first two and this should follow suit.
I’ll say this first Allegiant (the second part arrives in March 2017) will be the first of the series to fall below the $50M mark out of the gate with low to mid 40s being more probable.
The Divergent Series: Allegiant opening weekend prediction: $43.7 million
For my Miracles from Heaven prediction, click here:
Chronicle director Josh Trank spearheads 20th Century Fox’s reboot of the Fantastic Four franchise, some eight years after the last entry in the series. The big question is: how much of a clamoring is there for these heroes return to the silver screen?
Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara and Jamie Bell headline the cast in this reported $122 million tentpole that marks the third and final superhero flick of the summer, after Marvel’s Avengers: Age of Ultron and Ant-Man. Fantastic Four has no hope of reaching Ultron numbers and may be lucky to even be in Ant-Man’s territory.
2005’s original Fantastic Four debuted to $56 million on its way to a $154 million domestic gross while its 2007 sequel Rise of the Silver Surfer opened slightly higher with $58 million. The follow-up did end up earning less overall with $134 million. Both premieres are right in line with Ant-Man’s $57 million first take some three weeks ago.
While any major league comic book film should have no problem making over $40 million out of the gate, this one’s ceiling may not be significantly higher. I’m not convinced audiences are overly eager for this series to come back and early word of mouth has been mixed, at best. I don’t see this making what Ant-Man or the first two Four pics made and a debut in the high 40s seems likely.
Fantastic Four opening weekend prediction: $47.7 million
In less than one month, the Summer 2015 Movie Season will be upon us! That means studios will be bringing out their big wannabe blockbusters with sequels, reboots, animated tales, comic book heroes, and a surprisingly robust group of potentially intriguing comedies.
Therefore, I am bringing you my personal 15 most anticipated summer movies for the year. Let me talk briefly about some pictures that didn’t quite make the cut. I left off animated fare such as Pixar’s Inside Out and Despicable Me spin-off Minions. Same goes for Pitch Perfect 2, Magic Mike XXL and the film version of HBO’s Entourage. And then there’s a film I figured would make the cut: Terminator: Genisys that marks Arnold Schwarzenegger’s return to his iconic role after 12 years. Why? Quite frankly, I wasn’t crazy about the trailer. Don’t get me wrong – I’m still highly curious to watch it.
I will be breaking up my list in three installments and we begin this evening with numbers 15-11. Subsequent posts covering the top ten will arrive Friday and Saturday.
Let’s get to it, shall we?
15. Spy
Release Date: June 5
Originally, I probably wouldn’t have figured Melissa McCarthy’s new comedy would make the cut. That’s until reviews from screenings at South by Southwest came out and they indicate this is the star’s best feature so far. It doesn’t hurt that Paul Feig, director of McCarthy’s Bridesmaids and The Heat is behind the camera. Jude Law, Rose Byrne, and Jason Statham co-star.
14. Masterminds
Release Date: August 14
From the director of Napoleon Dynamite comes this heist comedy with a killer cast: Zach Galifianakis, Kristin Wiig, Owen Wilson, and Jason Sudeikis. The trailer inspires hope.
13. Vacation
Release Date: July 31
Yes, they’re rebooting the Vacation franchise with Ed Helms and Leslie Mann as grown-up Rusty and Audrey and Chevy Chase and Beverly D’Angelo back as Clark and Ellen. Christina Applegate, Chris Hemsworth, and Charlie Day round out the cast. Here’s to hoping this is more like the original and Christmas Vacation than Vegas Vacation. No trailer has been released at press time.
12. Southpaw
Release Date: July 24
Jake Gyllenhall has been on a roll lately choosing his projects, including last year’s terrific Nightcrawler. This sports drama sees him playing a boxer with serious family issues. It also sees him heavily bulked up in a pic that could get awards attention, like 2010’s The Fighter. Antoine Fuqua directs (he made Training Day and The Equalizer) and Rachel McAdams and Forest Whitaker co-star.
11. Fantastic Four
Released Date: August 7
The first two installments of the famed Marvel comic books (the ones with Jessica Alba and Michael Chiklis) were decent size hits, however critics didn’t approve. This reboot comes from Chronicle director Josh Trank with a cast that includes Miles Teller, Kate Mara, and Michael B. Jordan and it will attempt to begin the franchise anew.
And that’s all for now! Numbers 10-6 coming at you tomorrow…
Divergent exists because of The Hunger Games. While it may be based on its own series of popular YA novels (which were probably also “inspired” by the Games books), it’s the success of Jennifer Lawrence and company that made this possible. Imitation isn’t always so bad if you can find a somewhat interesting way to do it. Yet for the most part, despite a solid effort from the actors involved, Divergent often feels dull, way too familiar, and poorly paced.
In a dystopian future (of course), the city of Chicago now looks like District 12 and society is divided into five needlessly complicated factions where at age 16, citizens must choose where they wish to belong. There’s a faction for smart people and brave people and selfless people and so on. As we open, Beatrice (Shailene Woodley) is about to take her test to find out where she belongs, as is her brother Caleb (Ansel Elgort). You take the test to show where to go, but have free will to join another group. You can also be considered divergent, which means you don’t fit into any faction. The powers that be don’t like the free will thinking of that subgroup and kill them. Beatrice turns out to be just that and must hide it from everyone. She joins Dauntless (the brave law enforcement team) to the surprise of her parents (Tony Goldwyn and Ashley Judd), who are involved in the government ruling selfless faction. Brother Caleb joins the smart people group. Katniss volunteers in place of her little sis… oh, wrong movie.
If this all sounds more complicated than it needs to be, you would be correct. Soon enough, though, we’re in known territory with training sequences that take Tris (she shortens Beatrice) on a physical and mental journey. There’s also several shades of Inception in the proceedings, as part of the training involves dream like worlds and reading minds.
One of Tris’s Dauntless superiors is Four (Theo James) and he becomes her love interest who may have some easily predicted secrets of his own. There’s also Woodley’s Spectacular Now boyfriend Miles Teller as a weasel of a faction member. This is in addition to Shailene’s romantic counterpart Elgort as her brother. So while there’s no love triangle, our lead actress’s filmography makes things kinda awkward.
Kate Winslet leads the smart people faction, who have evil designs on taking over the government themselves. This puts Tris in the position of needing to protect her family while furiously protecting her true divergent nature.
The plus side of Divergent is really with Woodley. She’s a fine actress and she provides a better performance than the material. Same goes for James and most of the other personnel. That’s pretty much where the compliments stop. Some of the action is OK, but Divergent is just so routine. The look and feel borrow way too heavily from the aforementioned other franchise. They even cast Hunger Games costar Lenny’s daughter Zoe Kravitz as Tris’s BFF (best faction friend).
There is an admittedly nifty sequence where Tris simulates flying, albeit in a different way than her costar Winslet did in that movie about a boat and an iceberg. Divergent tries too hard to emulate The King of the YA Adapted Films and hits its own metaphorical ‘berg.
Opening a year after the hit Divergent, Insurgent is the second picture in a series of wildly popular YA novels penned by Veronica Roth. Stars Shailene Woodley, Miles Teller, Ansel Elgort, Theo James, Kate Winslet and Zoe Kravitz are back in the mix, along with newcomers to the franchise Naomi Watts and Octavia Spencer.
While this series will likely never do Hunger Games level numbers, the original opened to an impressive $54 million last March on its way to a $150 million domestic haul. It doesn’t hurt that Woodley, Teller, and Elgort have kept themselves firmly in the public eye with recent commercial and critical hits such as The Fault in Our Stars and Whiplash.
The big question is whether or not Insurgent manages to open larger than its predecessor. My gut feeling is that it will, even though competition among female fans will be considerable with Cinderella’s second weekend. I believe this will manage to break the $60 million mark out of the gate.
Insurgent opening weekend prediction: $62.1 million
The road to greatness for Andrew (Miles Teller) is filled with unexpected turns, bloody hands, and plenty of insults in Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash. And I do mean lots and lots of insults. Creative, brutal and often hilarious insults that would make R. Lee Ermey’s Full Metal Jacket drill sergeant very proud.
Andrew is a freshman at New York’s storied Shaffer Conservatory music school where he’s following his dream of being a drummer. He aspires to be Buddy Rich and his raw talent is undeniable. Another legendary musical icon mentioned often is Charlie Parker and the alleged tale of him achieving greatness when Jo Jones hurled a cymbal at his head to make him try harder. Andrew’s Jo Jones is Fletcher (J.K. Simmons), his teacher and conductor who consistently berates his pupils in the aforementioned imaginative ways. He’s not adverse to throwing whatever is lying around either. Fletcher uses any information at his disposal to hurl his verbal abuse, including the fact that Andrew’s mother abandoned him as a child. There are no off limits for Fletcher, yet he believes his actions are warranted for his kids to reach their full potential.
Perhaps they are. Whiplash does a remarkable job at not making its two main characters anything resembling caricatures. Just when we want to despise everything about Fletcher, he does something to give you pause. Andrew is far from perfect as well and we see that in his half hearted efforts at a relationship with a young Fordham student (Melissa Benoist). He is on a self appointed track to become the next Buddy Rich and any extracurricular activity is not needed in his mind.
Whiplash has gained most of its publicity from the work of J.K. Simmons and there’s reason for it. His performance will stay with you. It’s a triumph of acting that will and should earn this fine character actor a gold statue. That said, the performance of Teller is key and as he’s already proven in The Spectacular Now – his young John Cusack quality fits in well here. Paul Reiser has some good moments as Andrew’s supportive father.
Chazelle’s effort is a master class in editing and sound work. The musical performances (the pic gets its title from one of their pieces) are something to behold. Whiplash follows the storyline of many teacher/pupil relationship movies, but adds a whole lot of original spin. You’ll leave with the music in your head and most of all – Fletcher’s quick tongue. The screenplay is smart enough to leave it to us to decide whether Andrew’s journey to perceived perfection is worth it. For us it’s definitely a journey worth taking.
Four was the magic number today in movie news. Four as in this morning, the first trailer for the reboot of this summer’s The Fantastic Four was unveiled. You may recall when 20th Century Fox released two movies based on the iconic comic book in 2005 and 2007 with a cast that included Jessica Alba and Michael Chiklis. They did decent business at the box office but critics and fans mostly disapproved. The reboot’s cast includes Miles Teller, Kate Mara, Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Bell. Josh Trank, who burst upon the scene with his sleeper hit Chronicle, handles directing duties. The trailer certainly indicates a more serious tone than what we saw a decade ago. The picture is out August 7.
Four is also a significant number based on news we’ve been waiting to hear for some time. Ghostbusters is finally working its way back to the big screen with a highly comedically talented group of women being the ones who got the call. Paul Feig, maker of Bridesmaids and The Heat, directs and he’s enlisted previous collaborators Kristin Wiig and Melissa McCarthy as part of the quartet. Obviously this marks a Wiig-McCarthy reunion and Feig’s fourth pic with McCarthy (their third feature Spy is out this summer). The other two Busters are current SNL cast members: Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones.
At one time it was thought that a traditional third pic in the franchise would eventually see the light of day. However it never materialized partly due to Bill Murray’s reported reluctance to return. By the time of Harold Ramis’s untimely passing year, director of the original two Ivan Reitman made it clear he had no interest in exploring a continuation. The new Ghostbusters is expected for release in summer 2016.
It will certainly be fascinating to watch how these two new rebooted foursomes resonate with moviegoers in the near future.
More than a year after their financial juggernaut Twilight franchise wrapped up, Summit Entertainment moves on with their next series based on wildly popular YA novels with Divergent, opening Friday. Based on Veronica Roth’s books, the futuristic sci-fi actioner comes with a healthy $80 million budget and high expectations from the studio. Two sequels have already been greenlit with Insurgent debuting a year from now.
Headlined by Shailene Woodley and Theo James, Divergent also features a supporting cast that includes Shailene’s Spectacular Now costar Miles Teller and Oscar winner Kate Winslet. The box office prospects for Divergent are a bit murky. It’s highly unlikely to reach Hunger Games types of numbers. It also hopes to avoid the disappointing performances of other YA movies like The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones or Beautiful Creatures from last year.
Recent speculation has focused on Divergent opening in range with the first Twilight, which earned $69.6 million in its premiere. This seems like reasonable territory to me. The chances of Divergent getting past $75M out of the gate are within reach. However, I’ll predict it falls just under what Bella, Edward, and company achieved in their debut.
Divergent opening weekend prediction: $68.4 million
For my Muppets Most Wanted prediction, click here:
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