Weekend Forecast for August 30-September 1, 2019
By Reagen Sulewski
August 29, 2019
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Don't Let Go is the more promising of the two, both for having a solid presence and for its backing, from Blumhouse, which has been able to do a lot with a little lately. A soft sci-fi thriller, it stars David Oyelowo as a detective whose niece and her parents are murdered in a brutal attack while he's on the phone with them. Several days later, he gets a mysterious phone call that may just be his niece, calling from two weeks before the incident. With this connection, he tries to solve the murder and prevent it from ever happening, guiding his niece to uncover the real mystery.
Also starring Storm Reid (the kid lead in A Wrinkle in Time), Brian Tyree Henry, Mykelti Williamson and Alfred Molina, it's got a decent cast and premise, but a release on this weekend with this limited rollout points to very little confidence in it from the studio, even a small one like Blumhouse. Best case scenario is likely around $5 million.
That motocross/military crossover film you've been longing for is finally here with Bennett's War. Soap opera actor Michael Roark plays a member of the Army Rangers elite motorcycle unit (today I learned...) who is injured in battle (in one of the least convincing "foreign" scenes ever shot). Returning to the US, he finds he family's farm (run by country singer Trace Adkins, so there's your problem right there) is trouble and could be repossessed, so he goes back to what he knows - racing them motorcycles. Of course, one bad crash and he could end up paralyzed but that's not something any red-blooded American concerns himself with, right?
Practically a single 90 minute scene of a motorcycle jumping in front of a superimposed waving American flag, it's a film that barely escaped the direct-to-digital market and is lucky to be as close to 1,000 venues as it is. It's honestly surprising that there's not an overt religious messaging to the film, as that would at least give it a tie-in to an existing market. I'd look for around $2 million at most this weekend.
Thus, Angel Has Fallen gets to claim the top spot again, mostly by default. It did have a respectable-for-this-franchise $21 million opening weekend, meaning Gerard Butler gets to eat for one more weekend, but the Fallen films have not exhibited legs even under better circumstances and with the whiskers on this franchise plus a holiday slow down, I'd look for a $10 million figure to win the weekend, with about $55 million as a final domestic total.
Good Boys had a modest second weekend after its own $21 million start, and the R-rated pre-teen comedy (that's a thing now!) should see around $7 million this frame, with about $70 million as a final total.
The Lion King may get one more final weekend as a relevant picture, having pulled clear of $500 million domestically and $1.5 billion internationally. $5 million this weekend would put in on pace for around $535 million domestically. Meanwhile, a trio of films that finished with around $8 million last weekend, Overcomer, Hobbs & Shaw, and Ready or Not, should each wind up with about $4 million.