Movies
[AFM ’13] ‘Dream Home’ Star Battles ‘The Apostles’
Featuring Dream Home fav Josie Hoi, we have the aFM sales art for The Apostles, a sci-fi horror written and directed by Jo Chien. Lam Suet and Xia Fan also star.
“Lorraine is a young novelist who has been suffering from severe headache, nightmares and occasional short-term memory loss from a car accident. Daily medication has become a part of her life. One day, a plane crash killed Lorraine’s husband Kenny. Not long after the accident, a call made by Kenny’s cell phone startled Lorraine. On the other side of the line was a man named Ben. His fiancée Lynn was killed in the same plane crash. Kenny’s cell phone was put into Lynn’s remain by mistake. Out of curiosity, Ben checked out Kenny’s phone and found the evidence which led him to believe that Kenny and Lynn were having an affair and planning to run away together to a town called X. Their sudden departure left Lorraine and Ben a lot of unanswered questions. In order to find out the truth of their other halves, they decide to go to this unheard town X where threatening incidents are expecting them.”
The Mandarin horror is now in post from All Rights Entertainment.
Movies
‘Abigail’ on Track for a Better Opening Weekend Than Universal’s Previous Two Vampire Attempts
In the wake of Leigh Whannell’s Invisible Man back in 2020, Universal has been struggling to achieve further box office success with their Universal Monsters brand. Even in the early days of the pandemic, Invisible Man scared up $144 million at the worldwide box office, while last year’s Universal Monsters: Dracula movies The Last Voyage of the Demeter and Renfield didn’t even approach that number when you COMBINE their individual box office hauls.
The horror-comedy Renfield came along first in April 2023, ending its run with just $26 million. The period piece Last Voyage of the Demeter ended its own run with a mere $21 million.
But Universal is trying again with their ballerina vampire movie Abigail this weekend, the latest bloodbath directed by the filmmakers known as Radio Silence (Ready or Not, Scream).
Unlike Demeter and Renfield, the early reviews for Abigail are incredibly strong, with our own Meagan Navarro calling the film “savagely inventive in terms of its vampiric gore,” ultimately “offering a thrill ride with sharp, pointy teeth.” Read her full review here.
That early buzz – coupled with some excellent trailers – should drive Abigail to moderate box office success, the film already scaring up $1 million in Thursday previews last night. Variety notes that Abigail is currently on track to enjoy a $12 million – $15 million opening weekend, which would smash Renfield ($8 million) and Demeter’s ($6 million) opening weekends.
Working to Abigail‘s advantage is the film’s reported $28 million production budget, making it a more affordable box office bet for Universal than the two aforementioned movies.
Stay tuned for more box office reporting in the coming days.
In Abigail, “After a group of would-be criminals kidnap the 12-year-old ballerina daughter of a powerful underworld figure, all they have to do to collect a $50 million ransom is watch the girl overnight. In an isolated mansion, the captors start to dwindle, one by one, and they discover, to their mounting horror, that they’re locked inside with no normal little girl.”
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