January 2018 Box Office Forecast
By Michael Lynderey
January 4, 2018
5. Maze Runner: The Death Cure (January 26th)
Barring some secret expansion of an obscure December platformer, the third and last film in The Maze Runner series should have this quiet January weekend all to itself.
The first Maze Runner was a kind of neat little riddle with a twist ending. It opened in 2014, a year that smiled golden dimples upon Young Adult book adaptations after the genre had been pronounced basically dead in the previous year. First, Divergent opened to $54 million in March, then The Fault in our Stars did just as well in June, and finally our pal the Runner dashed out in September to $32 million, clearing a $102 mil total when he was done. (Oddly, The Maze Runner was also the only one of those three 2014 films not to star Shailene Woodley).
Part 2, Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials, was released on the same weekend in 2015, but unfortunately the plot was forced to abdicate the "maze" part and put itself mostly on running (...from malicious malevolent adults in a dystopian desert future, if you're curious). Scorch Trials re-drew basically the same open as the first film ($30 million this time), but finished as its financial inferior, at $81m.
So where does that leave part 3? The Death Cure goes back into the dystopian wildlands, as the vaguely post-teenage resistance stages their final confrontation with the unwholesome and malicious corporation ruling the future. For the third time, consistency has been maintained. Wes Ball directs yet once more, T. S. Nowling now has three Maze Runner scripts to his name, and the cast has been re-assembled again, save for those playing the dead (Will Poulter, for one, starred as the grimacing villain in the first film, but his character was sufficiently deceased as to force Poulter to seek other territory to pursue grimacing in).
Dylan O'Brien returns in the lead, bravely soldiering on after a March 2016 on-set injury that delayed this film for a year (O'Brien for his part ventured on undaunted; he filmed another action role, the recent American Assassin, already subsequent to his injury). His comrades in arms return to continue the mission, including but not limited to Thomas Brodie-Sangster (yes, the little boy from Love Actually), Rosa Salazar, who will soon carry Battle Angel Alita, where she's not particularly recognizable, Kaya Scodelario, who was cast in Pirates of the Caribbean 5 on the strength of her Maze Runner performance, and Ki Hong Lee, who recently played a high school student, at 30 years old, in the horror film Wish Upon (I'm trying to see who'll be the last among my fellow 1980s-borns to play a high school student in a major film; Ki could be it).
But all cast accounting aside, the YA trajectory has been mapped out for me and for the film by all the Divergents and Hunger Games that came before us, and so I must forecast for The Death Cure humbler fortunes than its two predecessors.
Opening weekend: $21 million / Total gross: $54 million
6. 12 Strong: The Declassified True Story of the Horse Soldiers (January 19th)
In the wake of 9/11, 12 special ops and CIA paramilitary officers join an Afghan general for some early combat with the ruling Taliban regime, before the rest of the American coalition gets there on Sunday, October 7.
Most recent Januaries have had a strong military film, for reasons I'm still a little unsure about (likely audience members pumped up for the incoming Superbowl, perhaps?). The champions of this grouping are the old-timer Black Hawk Down (2001) and Lone Survivor (2013), though one must plausibly include the slightly less action-packed American Sniper (2014) among their numbers (by the way, yes, as of today, American Sniper is still the highest-grossing film of its year. I'll keep checking). 12 Strong, unwittingly, combines the titles of 13 Hours and Boston Strong, two recent January releases that played to the same market with less success than their predecessors.
The strongest of the 12 is played by Chris Hemsworth, who is a great leading man, burly but droll with the occasional humorous asides; and though I've liked many of his lesser-known films, like the car-racing Rush (2013) and the computer hacking Blackhat (2015) and the deep sea whale-hunting In The Heart of the Sea (2015), the highest single box office total amassed within those ranks is $26 million, for the first film. 12 Strong should surpass that, of course, and will.
Among Hemsworth's brothers-in-arms here are Michael Shannon, who's fun to listen to onscreen and off, Michael Peña, who's always third-billed in these military movies (and again here), and Trevante Rhodes, who played the adult Chiron in Moonlight and here firmly moves on into more mainstream studio cinema. Jerry Bruckheimer produces, as he must, and the film seems aptly patriotic and modestly rah-rah.
There's a sense of cinematic synergy here, too: a Michael Shannon character declared at the end of Oliver Stone's World Trade Center (2006) that they'll need some good men to avenge this, and it looks like he's finally getting his cinematic wish.
Opening weekend: $18 million / Total gross: $43 million
7. Proud Mary (January 12th)
A film that in its poster and marketing (and title, actually!) seems to recall such blaxploitation treasures of the 1970s as Coffey (1973) and Foxy Brown (1974), both of which starred the inimitable Pam Grier, who surely should cameo in this one (or in any other movie, for that matter).
Here, Taraji P. Henson is Proud Mary, a hitwoman who befriends a helpless young boy, and then (you know where this is going...) decides to change her ways, clean up her act, and join the side of the angels, but not before all the right people are wiped off the screen (... by her), giving her and the orphaned child freedom. Henson, one of the three headliners of the recent juggernaut Hidden Figures, may not be the obvious choice to play a hired killer, but she had one of her first big roles as a hitperson in Smokin' Aces, and presumably still wields a glock with sufficient glee. Danny Glover and Neal McDonough are among the supporting actors on hand for the fun, and I'd bet neither of their characters makes it to the end credits.
Directed by Babak Najafi, previously of Gerard Butler's London Has Fallen, the film is a crime and revenge picture from a studio, Screen Gems, that specializes in high-earning B movies, often slotted for January. With this, they should have a respectable notch on their belt, even as Mary gives up hers.
Opening weekend: $16 million (4-day) / Total gross: $35 million
8. Forever My Girl (January 19th)
This small town-set romance about a country musician who returns to retrieve the girl he left behind stars Jessica Rothe, who was great as the lead of the breakout slasher hit Happy Death Day, and English actor Alex Roe, who has been quietly lurking in the frames of these early year releases for a while now (he was one of the male leads in The 5th Wave, and failed to put much of a dent in that annoying little ghost girl, in Rings, last year). And so while not relevant for the purposes of this film, we can deduce that when it comes to fighting off horror film villains, Rothe has a higher kill count.
I confess my prediction is a sort of compromise: I don't live on territory inhabited by a whole lot of people with an affinity for country music. Indeed, in those lands where country is played often, and received with enthusiasm, this film may well be consistently and thoroughly advertised, and the Heidi McLaughlin novel on which it is based may be wildly and ribadly popular. As such, it's entirely possible that Forever My Girl will gross untold sums of money to a degree much more robust than I give it early credit for, just as it could be that it will be a blot even on the radar of the Deep South. So for this prediction, wish me luck.
Opening weekend: $12 million / Total gross: $30 million
9. Den Of Thieves (January 19th)
This heist and guns saga with the medieval-sounding name reminds me of Triple 9, another violent action thriller with a large ensemble cast mixing criminals and the law duking it out for a fetching sum of money (though allegiances tend to change often in the movies). The Neeson-like action star Gerard Butler is the headliner, as a crooked cop who joins some ne'er-do-wells (Pablo Schreiber, 50 Cent, and O'Shea Jackson, Jr.) in planning and executing a robbery at a Los Angeles bank. I would have assumed that they are not successful, but given that Butler is first-billed, I'm not ruling out that he gets away with at least a little of the dough.
The film opens, perhaps unwisely, on the same day as 12 Strong, putting these two R-rated testosterone-generators on a collision course likely to draw a glint away from both. The very bare January 26th would have perhaps been a better date, but the film is likely to come in on the lower end of Butler's action output one way or the other.
Opening weekend: $12 million / Total gross: $28 million
Paul Thomas Anderson's searing new drama Phantom Thread expands around the country as well, and will presumably serve as a treat for admirers of the man and his rather challenging work. Also a perk for fans of Anderson's films is that a critically-acclaimed, full-length biopic of the man was in fact released widely just last December 8, directed by and starring James Franco as Anderson (I don't remember the biopic's title right now, only that it was totally accurate).
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