REGINA - Hello and welcome to another annual edition of the Cairns on Cinema summer blockbuster preview!
Yes, it is indeed that time of year again, a time eagerly anticipated by movie fans near and far. And the blockbuster season begins this weekend with the release of… The Fall Guy!
Aaargh!!!
Yes, all you comic book and superhero movie fans out there, this weekend is looking less than overwhelming, for a change. Where’s the Marvel movie? The first weekend in May is normally the weekend when Marvel Studios would roll out its blockbuster entry to kick off the summer blockbuster movie season, such as the Iron Man movies. Or The Avengers, or the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise. And these would haul in a sure-fire $100 million or more, and that would power the summer blockbuster season to a fast start year after year.
But this weekend, Marvel is conspicuously absent of new releases. Instead, we see Universal’s The Fall Guy, starring Ryan Gosling of Barbie fame, and based on the old TV show from the Eighties about stunt men that starred Lee Majors. Predictions are it might come in at a far more modest $35 million this opening weekend.
What’s going on? Well, it’s what ‘didn’t’ go on in 2023 that is to blame for the release situation this weekend, and for that matter, for this whole summer to come. The 2023 strikes at both the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild have wreaked havoc on big-budget releases. One of the biggest ones, the latest Mission: Impossible sequel, had to be punted to 2025 because it was delayed by the strikes. That’s potentially hundreds of millions in box office revenue this summer gone right there.
The end result is that we are not expecting a lot of the real blockbusters of 2024 to start to hit the theatres until much later in the year. That’s too bad. For now, we are left with a number of sequels and animated efforts as your major summer box office contenders, and to be honest with you I don’t know how excited I am about this lineup. I keep on complaining how tired I am of sequels and the public keeps saying the same thing, and yet they still show up.
Maybe this situation opens the door for a sleeper hit that comes out of nowhere. Or maybe one of these sequels catches fire and is a phenomenon. A lot of people last year didn’t expect “Barbieheimer” weekend to be the phenomenon it was until closer to when it happened, for example. But as far as I can tell, summer of 2024 looks less than exciting.
Here are the main release dates to watch for and some of the major blockbusters coming out this summer:
May 10 we can expect to see Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, which seems likely to be the top box office draw for the month, although IF starring Ryan Reynolds the following week could challenge that status. May 24 will see Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, as well as Garfield, and I see some predictions out there claiming one or the other might do well at the box office. But they are battling for audiences on the same opening weekend so my guess is they might cancel each other out.
June 14 should see the main box office contender of the month emerge with Inside Out 2 from Pixar, with a lot of predictions of a $100 million weekend. The other title to watch out for at the box office this month is Bad Boys: Ride or Die.
Then comes July, and we are expecting this month to see the top contenders of the summer emerge starting July 3 with Despicable Me 4, and then Deadpool & Wolverine on July 26 starring Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman. Interesting to me is that in between is the release of Twisters, which is a sequel to the 1996 movie Twister. Given the number of tornadoes that have already hit the ‘States and have freaked people out already there, this could get an audience.
Overall, I don’t see a multitude of movies that are likely to set the world on fire. Similarly, last year saw a number of underperforming big-budget movies before Barbie and Oppenheimer bailed Hollywood out. I see nothing like Barbieheimer on the horizon this summer, but then again I didn’t see the whole Barbie-Oppenheimer phenomenon coming last year at this same time, either.
This summer, I forsee maybe three movies battling it out for top spot at the box office at between $340-$375 million domestic gross. My prediction is the winner will be… Despicable Me 4 at $375 million, followed by Deadpool & Wolverine at $350 million and Inside Out at $340 million.
That’s my fearless prediction, and remember —- I picked Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part I to win the summer box office last year. (Bwahahahahaha!!)
Yes, you really can take my summer box office predictions to the bank (not). Word of advice, yet again: don’t bet on the movies! See you later.
