‘Running Man’ & ‘Now You See Me 3’ Have To Contend With ‘Predator: Badlands’ At Weekend Box Office
Paramount’s $110M redo of the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger movie The Running Man, this time starring Glen Powell, is targeting a No. 1 win at the box office this weekend, with around $20M. But it’s facing the heat carried by the second weekend of 20th Century Studios’ Predator: Badlands, which looks to settle at around $16M, -60%.
What could keep Predator: Badlands in a better-than-expected B.O. range is that it carries the best CinemaScore ever for the franchise (A-), as well as a high PostTrak definite recommend of 78%. Also, working to Badlands’ advantage is its PG-13 rating to Running Man‘s R rating. Badlands cleared $5.7M on Veterans Day Tuesday for a running five-day total of $49.2M.
Both are heavily male-skewing movies, though Badlands’ second-best demo last weekend was women over 25 at 22%. Of Running Man‘s 3,400 locations, 1,000 are premium large-format screens. Previews start at 7 p.m. Thursday.
The Running Man, directed by Baby Driver‘s Edgar Wright and co-financed by Domain, is based on the 1982 novel by Stephen King and published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. It follows Ben Richards (Powell), a working-class dad who is running a murderous race set in a near-dystopian future. The goal? To win $1 billion to save his sick daughter. Over 30 days, contestants are hunted by assassins and must survive. Nobody has won the game before.
‘Now You See Me: Now You Don’t’
Lionsgate
Looking to be a date night movie, as well as a destination for families, is Lionsgate’s $90M+ threequel, Now You See Me: Now You Don’t about magicians who reteam for a diamond heist as they target dangerous criminals. The range is wild for Now You See Me 3, between high teens and low $20Ms, but tracking isn’t betting on a No. 1 win. Presales between Running Man and Now You See Me 3 are quite close. The second Now You See Me movie was in 2016, which had an opening of $22.3M for final domestic of $65M for a global take of $334.8M. While Lionsgate sells foreign, that’s where this franchise has rallied. But note, $97M of the last film’s global haul was made in China. Given how Hollywood movies largely have been soft in the Middle Kingdom post-pandemic, don’t expect this threequel to fare as well. Previews start at 2 p.m. Thursday.
RELATED: ‘Now You See Me: Now You Don’t’ Review: Gen Z-Driven Third Installment Attempts To Teach Old Magicians New Tricks
Tatiana Maslany in ‘Keeper‘
Neon
Neon’s third Oz Perkins genre title, Keeper, is the third wide entry at 1,950 theaters with an eye at low single digits. Billed as a throwback to 1970s horror films like Rosemary’s Baby, Keeper follows a couple during a romantic anniversary trip to a secluded cabin that turns sinister when a dark presence reveals itself. They’re forced to confront the property’s haunted past. Tatiana Maslany and Rossif Sutherland star. While Perkins’ previous two movies, Longlegs (Neon’s record opener at $22.4M) and The Monkey ($14M), opened higher, the P&A spend here is less than $10M, well under Longlegs’. That’s in accordance with the production cost of the movie, which was $6M, we hear, as well as its $4M global pickup price tag by Neon. First choice is best with women under 25 on tracking.
