August 2021 Forecast
By Michael Lynderey
August 12, 2021
BoxOfficeProphets.com
We can safely say: for now, movies in the post-apocalypse play on. These eight are what Max Mad would go to see.
1. Candyman (August 27th)
He's back! Say his name five times in front of a mirror, and he'll appear behind you, and then gladly spill your innards, or at least make an honest stab at it. "What is blood for, if not for shedding?" is the Candyman's signature quote. Yes, it's rhetorical.
Candyman is an imposing man, hook in hand, perpetual bee sting on lip, fur-littered overcoat on back (don't worry, I'm sure it's fake fur...). He was created/unleashed by English genius (for once, I mean it) Clive Barker in his 1980s short story "The Forbidden," and then the character's 1992 Bernard Rose film adaptation almost instantly ranked Tony Todd's masterfully played Candyman up there with Barker's Hellraiser-dwelling Cenobite Pinhead as a horror icon; by 1996, Scream's Matthew Lillard was already telling Neve Campbell that she'd branded her boyfriend "the Candyman" (spoiler: she branded right, and he knew it). Really, the man has achieved enough of a cult place outside of horrorworld that most civilians (non-horror fans) may be surprised to learn he's only starred in three films in total, one of them straight-to-video, and that one, the last, was 22 years ago. But you can't keep a good man down. If a character uses creative ways to kill people for a living in a horror film, then, sooner or later, he will be back.
And he is. The film uses the exact same title and may even be referred to as a remake (by your grandfather) or reboot or re-jigglemajiga in the media, but this is a sequel as far as I can see - the lead character, played by Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, is literally the same man who was taken as a baby by Candyman in the 1992 film, though returned in sound condition enough to plausibly headline his own motion picture. As I'm sure will be noted, that also makes Candyman 2021 the first film in the franchise not to star a young white woman as Candyman's spiritual opponent (although two of the three leads were revealed as Candyman's descendants - more on this later).
In the first film 28 years ago, Virginia Madsen's researcher dropped into the Cabrini-Green housing projects to explore the legend that had spread terror through its population. A common criminal was taking on the Candyman identity to exert his power, and as he was unmasked and led away, the actual Candyman appeared to reclaim his legacy, and, to quote one Frederick S. Krueger, "that's when the fun really began!"
Some might term a few recent horror films as "woke" or what word, but horror was always a socially aware genre. (I for one learned all my left-wing talking points from Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives.) Really: the original film tackled racism, policing (both a lack and excess of), and gentrification (and on that last theme, the 2021 film picks up in a Cabrini that looks very different). After the original movie took off, 1995 gave us two intriguing black-themed horror films: Tales from the Hood, which was definitely not a joke; and that first sequel, Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh, which took the story to New Orleans and fashioned our title protagonist an origin bound to old-fashioned 1880s racism. Before his supernatural reign of terror, he was just a young black artist who fell in love with a white plantation owner's daughter, and as punishment was then lynched, covered in honey, and thrown onto the dark-eyed wrath of ravenous bees. His hand was shorne and replaced by what became his trademark hook, later used to wrack bloody vengeance at his fate through the land.
His lover bore the legally dead man a daughter, beginning a genealogical line that extended to the heroine of the second film (Kelly Rowan), and, by the time of the third Candyman movie, her now-grown daughter (since part three's lead was born around 1995, that means Candyman 3: Day of the Dead, with the character now a decidedly grown adult played by former Playmate Donna D'Errico, would have probably been set around at least the mid 2020s; presumably after this one). The original Candyman grossed $25m in the mist of the horror of October 1992, besting even another genre icon, the great Dr. Giggles, and leading to the sequel and its $13m take in 1995. And on the big screen at least, with Candyman apparently absent, we've since had to get our fill of hook-handed murders from the I Know What You Did Last Summer films instead.
Not anymore. After all that useful exposition, where are we? Jordan Peele's Get Out grossed $176m in 2017, and his Us came in just precisely under it with $175m in 2019; in a remarkably understandable decision, he was therefore granted license to do with the horror genre whatever he artistically pleased. (Peele's two films cost $4.5m and $20m, respectively. Like I always say, when we reach the time when almost every movie bypasses theatrical play, superhero junk and horror movies will be the last two genres to be making a theatrical profit, and I'm happy about one half of that fact).
And Candyman was on Peele's list. Before Peele's next film Nope in 2022 (Nope is the title..... yes), he makes a detour to co-write/co-produce this long-awaited return. Nia DaCosta (Little Woods) directs the new sequel before selling her soul to Marvel to make their film The Marvels (yes... superheroes. Again. What would Candyman say?). And the stars are Abdul-Mateen II, Teyonah Parris, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett, and, and, and, is that Tony Todd I see in the credits once again?
So, to prepare for the sequel, do go in front of that mirror and say "Candyman" as many times as possible. It's worth it. I mean, have you seen the state of horror villains today? We desperately need him back.
Opening weekend: $15m / Total gross: $41 million
2. Don't Breathe 2 (August 13th)
"If you don't die a villain, you live long enough to see yourself become the hero."
Now who said that? Nobody did, not yet, but this month we can use it as the tagline for either Don't Breathe 2 or The Suicide Squad (Candyman? I don't know).
This is a sequel that takes an ostensible (and creative) bad guy from the first film and gives him a fresh coat of paint, turning him from a disturbed kidnapper and murderer into someone who still partakes in those activities, but this time with an beneficial affect on society.
Don't Breathe was a striking movie-that-could in 2016, costing a handful of peanuts (million-dollar peanuts) to make and opening to $26m over just such an August frame as this sequel is getting; the total was $89m, for a multiple of well over 3 times; it didn't make $100m, but may as well have.
The plot? Minted scream cream Jane Levy was a blameless house robber who descends with her compatriots (one mean, one gentle-hearted and pining for her romantic love) on one of those abandoned Detroit houses in the middle of an industrial wasteland that contains both 1. a (rumoured) impressive fortune of dollar bills and 2. a blind man guarding said treasure. And it turns out he's really good at causing things pain, without ever having to quite see the face above the throat he's cutting.
That's not all he's good at. Alternating between scenes of solid suspense and terror as the blind man stalked our thieving heroes through the night, the film - spoilers! - dabbled in a frankly bizarrely nasty subplot about a woman he kidnapped and impregnated (he did that artificially, don't worry!). Then she was shot and killed. She probably had it coming, the film implies. He also finished off poor, good-hearted Dylan Minnette, who hasn't made it through at least two horror films out of three I've seen (he also has Scream 5 out next year, so...). This is quite a rap sheet, I concede, but who are mere mortals to judge such an interesting character?
In any case, two left this house alive, the bad guy among them, and given both the financial information provided above and the genre involved (horror), a sequel necessitated itself to being made. The only unusual datapoint is that it took this long.
Don't Breathe 2 is in fact the only major film this month to have done all of its principal photography ''after'' the current situation began in March 2020, much like the film Old last month was the first wide theatrical release with the same distinction. Indeed, I remember being startled by reports one year ago that a hitherto-unannounced Don't Breathe sequel was already in the process of filming in August 2020.
For the plot this time, we are given the classic action movie archetype of a grizzled old man and a young little girl he's raising facing the world together, although again it's old beardo that does most of the shooting and the filleting of unwanted houseguests. Our favorite blind man Norman lives in the woods now, not in urban sprawl dirt, and as more robbers and cads (led by old gen x film mainstay Brendan Sexton III) descend upon the property, this time with no sympathetic characteristics, Norman must use his admittedly unusual very special skills ("egad, that's impressive," said Liam Neeson when he heard about what he did in the first movie) to take them down and rid the world of a handful of more miscreants. So, the film sets down bad guys, a good guy (lol), and an innocent child whose life must be saved, so that she at least can grow up to be much older. Now the violence can safely begin.
Fede Álvarez helmed both the original film, and the 2013 Evil Dead remake, and has in the past decade wed himself to the horror genre much as Jordan Peele has; here, he hands directing reigns over to his creative partner Rodo Sayagues. Our stealth assassin is again Stephen Lang, who began as a character actor in the 1980s before getting that one special part (Avatar). Don't Breathe gave him another. Now, the box office fortunes of a Don't Breathe sequel are not easily predictable: the sequel comes five years after the original, and is another R-rated action offering in a month with a lot of violence-heavy prospects. If you enjoyed the first, presumably the sequel will give you more of the same, except with the benefit of cutting out the moral complications involved in the blind man's extra-curricular activities. He's a good man, now. Trust me, he's lived well long enough.
Opening weekend: $15 million / Total gross: $44m
3. PAW Patrol: The Movie (August 20th)
August 20th is the day millions upon millions of extremely young citizens have been eagerly awaiting, as the big-budget* film adaptation of the Canadian cg puppy show that has enthralled the world, arrives in North American theatres at last.
*sure, why not.
PAW Patrol premiered eight Augusts ago, and has since amassed as many as 188 episodes in some tellings of it, most running just 11 minutes, and depicting the multitidunous adventures of search and rescue dogs in Adventure City, where the innocent never cease to fall right into danger; with only the crew of talking, pocket-sized puppies available to come to their rescue.
Direction is by Cal Brunker of Nut Job 2 (that's the superior Nut Job film, I say), and previously apparently unaffiliated with the franchise. Hope he didn't get sea legs. And as expected, the big-screen version has attracted a bevy of famous guest voices, likely induced into saying "yes" by their own small children at threat of compromising information, and giving this thang its aimed-for theatrical glow. Jimmy Kimmel, Tyler Perry, Randall Park, Dax Shepard, play supporting humans, while younger actors like Iain Armitage and Marsai Martin take over for some of the action-oriented puppies. The plot is mostly as expected: the band of rescue dogs (literally) are still commanded by their 10 year-old human genius leader Ryder to restore order and tranquility throughout the conflict ridden city, especially after something called Mayor Humdinger is elected mayor (oh, no, is this another instantly-dated reference to...?). In any case, bad guys - beware. You shall be bitten on the ankle, pawed in face and foot, dragged publically on the floor of town square, and then thrown into the local incarceratory facility, where you belong. Crime doesn't pay!
Children's films have done commendably well over the last year or so, with Boss Baby 2's $55m and Jungle Cruise's $65m thus far being decidedly above-average performances, at least by my grading system (Space Jam has weakend, but opened at $31m, above the guesses of many).
So what shall we expect from PAW Patrol, even in the waning days of summer? An inflated opening? A big drop? The audience this time out skews younger than it has perhaps for any film released in theatres over the last five years. I think extremely young children could be slow enough getting to the theatre (they must crawl, most can't drive), and so the PAWers could have them some legs. These pups are still growing.
Opening weekend: $5m / Total gross: $25 million
4. The Protégé (August 20th)
Lionsgate is the distributor, not surprisingly, of a film that's exactly of the type that has been a hallmark of box office during the current era - at least from August 2020 to May 2021, before the big hitters came back. Let Him Go, Honest Thief, Unhinged, The Marksman: all featured established, name leading men navigating familiar action plots, as if nothing in the world had changed. And the box office responded to the overture with grosses like $13m, $20m, $15m - solid at the time for non-brand titles, just as many weren't paying attention.
Maggie Q headlines this tale of treacherous assassins-for-hire, alongside Samuel L. Jackson and Michael Keaton in the "established" roles. And they're three actors whose casting in an action-thriller entitled The Protégé tells you everything. One, the youngest of course, will embody the title character, a novice to the allegedly tricky world of international intrigue. Another will be a genuine mentor, whose legacy of mutual respect and camaraderie in the business of assassination for hire will be honored at the end. And the third shall be a benign-seeming older gentleman who commands clear respect, but who will be revealed as the embodiment of secular evil, to be slain by film's climax in order to allow its proper end.
And which of the two men will fulfill which part of the loving cliché? Keaton just played more or less the same protegé's elder archetype in American Assassin; with his cold but reassuring stare, he does it well. Jackson's character is said to be slain relatively early on, which perhaps means he'll re-appear after 50 minutes screen time as the real bad guy. (he already faked his death in Captain America 2 - spoiler alert - but we could believe him all over again). Hovering above these intrigues, Martin Campbell, who can point to action sagas of glories past (The Mask of Zorro, Goldeneye, Vertical Limit), directs.
Maggie Q had a big North American moment back with Live Free or Die Hard, a foil to Bruce Willis, who herself was lined as a coming action star. She has maintained a reasonable series of credits since (Priest, Balls of Fury, Divergent, the latter less-action on her part than one might think). Most recently, she was in a genre chance of pace, Fantasy Island, and here she's back in the gun-and-drop-kick game as a trained killer recruited by a mysterious secret organization to conduct its own series of targeted murders, and perhaps avenge Jackson's apparent demise (as I asked last month with Snake Eyes, just how many in this profession exist in real life, and how many make a good living at it?).
Once in a while, and perhaps more now than ever, the occasional B movie with juice comes at just the right time, and outgrosses a handful of prestigious studio films with hardier reputations and more long-term plans. (Demon Slayer opened ''above'' Mortal Kombat on its April friday, which was shocking). We'll see if The Protégé can slay a few of the bigger dragons. On screen, and off it.
Opening weekend: $10m / Total gross: $24m
5. The Night House (August 20th)
Rebecca Hall is the leading woman in this horror-thriller that makes its wide-enough bow this month, at last, after having premiered at Sundance back in the "before days" (that's January 2020; not the 2021 virtual sundance, which sounds futuristic).
The Night House stands upon one of my favourite movie settings: a crystal clear lake, a spacious residence, empty, encroaching upon the water, a scattered few neighbors popping in and out of the dark, a secret to be uncovered. In some ways, fitting for the times.
Hall starred in the excellent thriller The Gift (2015), and here dips into the menaced ether again. She's a widow who retreats to a charming abode by crisp black lake, and is menaced by ghoulish night visions on one hand (let's hope she's not driving), and vital and frightening new information about her dead husband, previously unknown to her, slow-dipping into her consciousness, on the other. All this shall must tie together, and she probably won't like it when it does (Hall doesn't look too thrilled with her haunted circumstances on the posters, that's for sure).
David Bruckner (of The Signal and V/H/S) directs, and David S. Goyer (no re-introduction to genre fans necessary) is among the producers, so there's some history here. These smallish horror-thrillers can break out right when no one's watching, ironically. The Gift, indeed, grossed $11m on its first weekend and somehow totaled at $43m. Sure, The Night House seems smaller, bleaker, more under the radar. But it has a star and the kind of reviews (almost uniform, on the positive side) that may attract audiences to it especially on the more scattered, less event-driven days that await us shortly; as August blooms into sweaty dog days that more naturally house a chilly, air-conditioned thriller.
Opening weekend: $4 million / Total gross: $12 million
6. Respect (August 13th)
In decades past, Aretha Franklin roared into the wind, exploding soul and gospel and R&B spirit into the moist summer air anywhere remotely within her general location. Beginning as a young girl with a preacher father and an active congregation in need of a star singer, she lived a mostly uncomplicated and blemish-free life, with an early and consistent acclamation as a master of her craft - one that's rarely been challenged. This, at least, was the public image. Let's see if Respect says different.
Two similar projects have made their way out into digital consciousness lately, as is often the case when two producers get the very same ping in the head at precisely that one moment (Volcano and Dante's Peak did it best). The brilliant Cynthia Erivo played Franklin on National Geographic's Genius series earlier this year, and now Jennifer Hudson gets her turn on the big screen, in a film delayed from 2020 for understandable reasons and grafted onto the exact same weekend in 2021, as if nothing had changed. Things have.
The picture's length is intimidating: 2 hours and 35 minutes, with a lot of screen time given to the sound of music. The rest, of course, is to history: Franklin's rise as a teen singer, moving on through the turmoil of the 1960s, and then her status as emeritus goddess of musical soul for the decades after the 1970s. Multitudinous supporting players shall appear, many now dead - her mother Barbara (Audra McDonald), producer Jerry Wexler (Marc Maron), one husband (Marlon Wayans), then another, neither meeting her needs half-way. The stage world's Liesl Tommy directs.
All the drama and turmoil, inner, outer, and global, aside, this is a film whose thrust and heart of attraction will be seeing an actress who has already won one Oscar for a powerhouse singing performance deliver a reasonable claim for another one in exactly the same manner. And after the reasonable box office takes of more mature-themed The Green Knight ($10m and counting!) and Stillwater ($9m and counting!), perhaps there's an energized audience of grown adults still out there somewhere in the night waiting to be invited back in to the warm bosom of something a little more, grown, at least in principle; a tad of a reminder of the Oscar season glory of their past. The days, some not that long ago, where acclaimed and majestic films were attended by impeccably-attired members of the middle-class, persuaded by august critical reviews in major newspapers both national and local; and the box office roared like a wildfire.
Opening weekend: $9 million / Total gross: $25 million
7. Reminiscence (August 20th)
Hugh Jackman stars. As the title, and darkly shiny, rain-covered, poster, indicate, this is one of those plots where a man loses his beloved and mysterious love-lady and must use the science fictional alterations that he surprisingly discovers very easily, to bring her back, in one form or another (burying your dead missus in Pet Sematary is the rapid-results, horror version of the process; I highly recommend it instead). Reminiscence re-imagines the premise into a detective plot, allowing the curious to re-live the missing partner's very memories, thankfully sidestepping any consent issues. Oh, and action scenes also ensue.
Lisa Joy writes and directs, and produces with Jonah Nolan, brother of Christopher. They're the team behind Westworld on TV, so labyrinthian plotting may be both expected and demanded. The supporting cast is as respectable as such material and creators may command: Cliff Curtis, Thandiwe Newton, Daniel Wu, and Rebecca Ferguson, thespians used to third or fifth billing in genre ventures, and receiving that again here. The run time is, again, forceful and not for the faint of heart: 2 hours and 28 minutes, all set in the film's futuristic, water-ridden Miami, here beset by climate change catastrophe (so, roughly 2025 or so?). Reviews may or may not be enthusiastic, but should at least be supportive.
The film opens simultaneous with an HBO Max release, and as scholarly box office prognosticators we can at least surmise it will not open above the other August movie with the exact same release strategy, The Suicide Squad (will anything?). Between its late summer date and running time, Reminiscence is probably something largely seen or remembered on the small screen. Just please, don't confuse it with Transcendence.
Opening weekend: $6m / Total gross: $15m
8. The Suicide Squad (August 6th)
As I write this in the gaining days of August, it is clear to all concerned that, in the matter of summer 2021 box office, Black Widow shall indeed by our champion (gee, thanks, Marvel. You shouldn't have.) Or in other words, Black Widow is this year's The Wretched (google it).
It just wasn't to be, DC sequel.
The original film, Suicide Squad, easily distinguished from this one by its title, arrived in the middle of the bizarre box office giveaway known as 2016, when seemingly every month had conjured exactly one $300m earner to call its own. July had The Secret Life of Pets, for example, and August drew an even more offensive winner, at a total of $325m: a comic book adaptation about a group of supervillains released from incarceration and banded together by the poker-faced Amanda Waller to fight an ancient supernatural menace that, strictly speaking, one of the team's own members had summoned in the first place. What seemed like it may plausibly be an entertaining '80s-style romp through a cursed, abandoned city littered with possessed zombies became mostly just a steep climb through much run time. And it was PG-13.
But no one noticed at the time. Complaints about entertainment value aside, millions were made, memés were created, star salaries were justified (Will Smith, you did it again), breakout characters did their lot to revive the sexy Hallowe'en costume industry (Harley...), and, as Bane would say, Gotham will go on, yes. At the end of that day, the lack of at least one sequel was not in the realm of plausible facts.
Five years later, here it is, even facing the sudden scenario of being outgrossed by another follow-up to an August 2016 film, Don't Breathe 2 (well, it could happen). As we pick up in 2021, the squadders are again sent on a mission their bosses hope will hasten their demise. The island nation of Corto Maltese (that's the one the Soviets tried to nuke in the 1980s, for you history buffs in the audience) is again beset by political volatility and civil strife, a situation that foreign policy mavens have apparently decided can be resolved only through the intervention of dog collar-bone controlled supervillains; though the "super" part is sometimes in doubt. When it comes to extrahuman abilities on this team, you win some, you lose some. In the first film, Harley Quinn (née Quinzel) was around to attract the Joker's scent. In the follow-up, has she been selected because her gymnastics skills could not be matched by any one other shady athlete-turned-psycho clown doll killer?
The long passage of time has rejiggled the cast. There's no Will Smith (Big Willie Weekend is on hold for the duration), and that's a certain loss. Was that Venus Williams' dad movie really more important than saving poor, bombed-out Corto Maltese? With Will gone, somewhat less humourless machismo is provided by Idris Elba as one type of stoic mercenary, and John Cena as another, two big men prone to sudden glare-downs. The cast list also picks up any number of thespians already imbued in writer-director James Gunn's dirty imagination: Sean Gunn as some kind of walking ferret who kills people for entertainment value; Michael Rooker as an evil computer hacker; Peter Capaldi as a walking frontal lobe; and then the previous film's Killer Croc, played by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, is essentially replaced by King Shark, with Sylvester Stallone as, I believe, underwater shark royalty who's taken on humanoid characteristics, none of which forbid him from making this a film where many human heads will be bitten off at the root (on the Harley Quinn show, King Shark got away with snapping a Wayne Enterprise employee's cranium clean off with no apparent consequence, and that was before the hard-R rating this movie gets).
Returning players include Joel Kinnaman as Rick Flagg, who leads the enterprise with a presumed good-heart, Jai Courtney as that boomerang-heaver from Down Under, and Viola Davis as the person who had the extraordinarily bad idea to put this group together. Margot Robbie again plays Harley Quinn, as is her wont. Many deaths are promised, which I'm sure means those characters who die in this film will not appear in another major live-action motion picture ever. Last chance to see 'em, folks. Right here.
And let's not forget one more key absence: Jared Leto's Joker, a character who could have used more screen time and a wee bit of development, sits this one out idly. Many won't miss another Joker big-screen appearance, perhaps, and the many have a solid point, although I will say that had The Suicide Squad somehow included Joaquin Phoenix's Joker, with no explanation required nor given, it would have probably opened to $50m this very weekend. It's true.
The action has a sci-fi angle, but will likely also involved anonymous and frankly completely blameless South Americans who will be thoroughly trounced and eradicated off the face of their earth, which has been their fate in this type of action cinema since at least the 1980s, if not before. Oh, well. There are more where they came from.
And as for that director? James Gunn "lost" his job on Guardians of the Galaxy 3 because of some Twitter unpleasantness (seriously, what is Twitter and why is everyone so obsessed with it? There are at least several thousand other websites on the internet, if no walks in the park are available); then was hired by DC for their R-rated villain sequel; and by the end of this tale "found" the Guardians director's seat again (oh cool, where was it?). He's winning on the deal.
And critics have readily affirmed his work here with a 90%+ Tomato stamp, which he hasn't necessarily been used to. The first two films Gunn actually directed (Slither, Super) were cult classics, often critically unloved, and since, he's produced a few more excursions into violent horror (the committedly nasty The Belko Experiment, the workable Brightburn) that have also mostly played around only in single-digit openings, the natural habitat of such pictures. In a stark contrast, his comic book adaptation/superhero films (Guardians 1-2 and the current Suicide team) were universally critically exalted and can not ''possibly'' become cult classics... because they've made way, way, way, too much money.
In another universe, perhaps all of the man's career would have been dedicated to more fun and nasty little B-films. But in our world, Superman was released in 1978, Spider-Man in 2002, and Iron Man in 2008, three facts that necessitated the transition of the blockbuster divisions of most major studios into focusing primarily, exclusively, and frighteningly of course, on making fanboy-pleasing superhero movies. So Gunn's knack for comedic, silly, pulpy genre filmmaking was borrowed from the low-budget and sent up to the stratosphere, with the kind of financing most directors of the horror films of his childhood could have only dreamed of, if that. Those men were born at the wrong time, and had to stick to their red-dye gore. Gunn's been air-lifted right above it.
Still, The Suicide Squad isn't knocking down box office doors with the aplomb it might have expected in another, ''other'' alternate 2021. $26m open? Not good. It probably arrived at the wrong place on more than a few fronts that could only be speculated about - the streaming explosion that's had this film aired freely on HBO Max, the cyclically rising troubles in our world crisis, and perhaps, just, just maybe, even a general fatigue with superheroes (never mind, that's just me).
So at the end of the day, yes, Black Widow is winning this summer, there's no question now, even with less than $200m total for its piles. Vin Diesel will claim second place. John Krasinski third. The Suicide Squad, if it's as good as claimed, could play for a decent while yet and have shelf life on HBO Max, but will settle only for making's summer box office top 10. And if anyone still has any appetite, Guardians 3 awaits...
Total gross: $52 million