Movies
M. Night Shyamalan’s ‘Old’ Tops a Quiet Box Office With $16.5M Opening
Even though we’re getting extremely close to August, which is notoriously bad for the box office, I expected a stronger performance from Universal Pictures’ Old, the latest mind-bending thriller from M. Night Shyamalan.
While the film, about a family on a tropical holiday who discovers that the secluded beach where they are relaxing for a few hours is somehow causing them to age rapidly, appears to be extremely divisive among both critics and filmgoers, the marketing campaign has been extraordinarily strong. It was enough to propel the film to a $16.5M opening with an additional $6.5M overseas.
Old, which Meagan Navarro wrote “captures the absurdity of our times,” bested a crowded marketplace, dunking on Space Jam 2, as well as Snake Eyes, Black Widow, and even F9.
This is all extremely bad news for Sony Pictures’ Escape Room: Tournament of Champions (read our review), which after two weeks has yet to meet the opening weekend of its predecessor. In its second week of release, the thriller had a monstrous 61% drop for a $3.4M take and a two-week total of $16M. It’s currently sitting at $20M worldwide. The 2019 Escape Room opened to $18M and ended with $155M globally. The sequel is a major flop and that’s a shame considering the concept has serious franchise blood.
In case you’re curious, The Forever Purge just topped $50M worldwide while A Quiet Place: Part II, now on PVOD and Paramount+, surpassed $285M and is targeting $300M globally.
In regards to Escape Room 2, Sony has got to be extremely concerned about the Aug. 13 release of Don’t Breathe 2, which doesn’t appear to be positioned any better than the former. We’ll see how things fare for the box office with the return to school looming and a pandemic that continues to wreak havoc on our globe.
Rachel (Holland Roden), Nathan (Thomas Cocquerel), Ben Miller (Logan Miller), Brianna (Indya Moore) and Zoey Davis (Taylor Russell) in Escape Room: Tournament of Champions.
Filming is underway on The Invisible Man director Leigh Whannell’s Wolf Man for Universal and Blumhouse, which will be howling its way into theaters on January 17, 2025.
Deadline reports that Matilda Firth (Disenchanted) is the latest actor to sign on, joining Christopher Abbott (Poor Things), Julia Garner (The Royal Hotel), and Sam Jaeger.
The project will mark Whannell’s second monster movie and fourth directing collaboration with Blumhouse Productions (The Invisible Man, Upgrade, Insidious: Chapter 3).
Wolf Man stars Christopher Abbott as a man whose family is being terrorized by a lethal predator.
Writers include Whannell & Corbett Tuck as well as Lauren Schuker Blum & Rebecca Angelo.
Jason Blum is producing the film. Ryan Gosling, Ken Kao, Bea Sequeira, Mel Turner and Whannell are executive producers. Wolf Man is a Blumhouse and Motel Movies production.
In the wake of the failed Dark Universe, Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man has been the only real success story for the Universal Monsters brand, which has been struggling with recent box office flops including the comedic Renfield and period horror movie The Last Voyage of the Demeter. Giving him the keys to the castle once more seems like a wise idea, to say the least.
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