Kevin Costner Goes Bradley Cooper. Also, Bradley Cooper.

Your combined Box Office Round-Up and This Week In Movie Posters. We've got a new Kevin Costner, Statham, and a hopelessly-sexual sounding children's movie.

Greetings, #Content Report enthusiasts. It’s Tuesday, which is almost Monday, and that means it’s time for your combined Box Office Round-Up and This Week In Movie Posters. If you’re enjoying this, please consider a paid subscription! Short of that, please like and share. Smash that like button, y’all.

Universal

The Exorcist: Believer was originally supposed to release on Friday the 13th this Friday, but then Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour moved into that slot, and producer Jason Blum tweeted that The Exorcist: Believer would open a week earlier to avoid the competition. Is there really a lot of crossover between the Taylor Swift and Exorcist audiences? I don’t really know, but then, I’ve never heard of this Taylor Swift person. Is she popular or something?

Anyway, “a week earlier” was this past Friday. The Exorcist: Believer was left as basically the only major new release, and it ended up earning about $26 million domestically (and almost $45 million globally).

Exorcist Believer (am I the only who has trouble not singing this in my head every time I read it?) is an Exorcist reboot from director David Gordon Green, the first of a planned Exorcist trilogy. Universal/Peacock paid $400 million for the rights to make three Exorcist movies in 2021. I’m guessing they wouldn’t have spent that kind of money in a post-writers strike environment in which the future of streaming is uncertain, but that’s what it cost when streaming was still the future.

Back in the olden times, studios would release a movie, and then if it was really successful, greenlight a sequel. Nowadays, successful movies are “IP,” and you have to sort of keep trying to make them happen just to tell yourself that you were smart for investing in that IP in the first place. Would a $26 million opening on a film that cost $30 million to make be worthy of a sequel? Probably not, but now Universal is stuck having to justify paying $400 million for the rights to it.

Maybe the next one will be good! Who knows!

Critics mostly hated this one, and you can’t really blame that on it being a franchise horror movie, considering Saw X came out a few weeks ago and was widely praised. William Friedkin, director of the original Exorcist, before he died this August allegedly told the film critic Ed Whitfield, “I don’t want to be around when that [reboot] happens. But if there’s a spirit world, and I come back, I plan to possess David Gordon Green and make his life a living hell.”

I’m mildly positive about most of David Gordon Green’s film output (I think I’m the only guy who liked Your Highness), but that being said, his other horror homages — the recent Halloween movies — have been mostly utilitarian. They seemed… just fine, and little more. Suffice it say, I did not feel like seeing an Exorcist reboot. It didn’t seem like the world was in desperate need of a horror movie about demonic possession, but as noted above, we’ll be getting more anyway.

That’s the trouble with “valuable IP,” it never accounts for market saturation.

It was a crowded marketplace for horror films, with Saw X and The Nun II landing in the three and seven lots, respectively. The Blind, the Christian biopic about the Duck Dynasty guy, held strong at number five, and its existence is scarier than all three of them combined.

Incidentally, William Friedkin’s final film, The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, is now available to stream on Paramount+. Theatrical release-wise, there isn’t much else to speak of until Killers Of The Flower Moon opens in a few weeks.

Okay, onto the posters!

This Week In Movie Posters

Welcome to the This Week In Movie Posters, the feature in which we go through all the week’s new movie posters and read way too much into them. Blessed are the paid subscribers, as without them, none of this would be possible. All posters via IMPA.

We open this week with this poster for Fair Play, which is already out on Netflix (I know because my wife watched it without me. Unbelievable.). They made the tagline a teardrop tattoo! The movie is called Fair Play, but something tells me someone in it isn’t going to play fair.

Movies schmovies, why don’t we just film some pop stars singing? Those are super popular, right?

Here’s a very early poster for Horizon (opening next Summer? that’s so far away!) which looks to be a Kevin Costner western. I assume it will scratch that Yellowstone itch, assuming the seven Yellowstone prequel and spinoff serieses haven’t cured it already.

As for the poster, all I can focus on here is Kevin Costner’s bizarre pose. What the hell is he doing? And why does he look like Bradley Cooper playing the Elephant Man?

(Side note: I got to show Brendan pictures of Bradley Cooper playing the Elephant Man for the first time and hear his live reaction on a Frotcast. One of my proudest moments.)

Damn, when there’s that many names above the title you know it’s going to be an awards movie. And yet it seems to be about… pro wrestling? How curious!

The true story of the inseparable Von Erich brothers, who made history in the intensely competitive world of professional wrestling in the early 1980s. [IMDB]

And it comes from the director of Martha Marcy May Marlene! I don’t know enough about pro wrestling to explain the significance of the Von Erich brothers, but maybe there’s someone online who writes about pro wrestling to explain it for you. Do they have those? People who write about pro wrestling? Someone look this up for me.

Apparently they were “inseparable” though. Maybe that was their shtick. Oh no, it’s the Inseparable Von Erich Brothers! They’re all stuck together again! Someone get the hose!

Just in case all those Jaws movies and Dark Waterses weren’t enough to scare you away from swimming at night, we now have the even-more-on-the-nose NIGHT SWIM, with a suitably straightforward poster. I really hope the trailer includes a slowed-down dramatic cover of REM’s “Nightswimming.”

Phew, I’m glad we have that pullquote on the left to explain to us that a movie called Smoke Sauna Sisterhood will be smoky and steamy.

SMOKE SAUNA SISTERHOOD: IT’S NOT JUST A CATCHY TITLE.

Before you ask, yes, Emma Raimi is Sam Raimi’s daughter. I also hate when movies just reuse a title that already exists. Don’t they worry people are going to hear that title and think, “Wait, isn’t this that movie where Michael Cera pees on himself?”

Okay, probably not, but the point still stands. I actually can’t fault them for the imagery here, I’m genuinely intrigued. What’s she looking at? Is she checking out that guy? What’s this girl’s deal? My brain wants to solve the mystery.

A series of events during Ruby's freshman year of college send her on a downward spiral, culminated by the arrival of a glamorous alter ego who begins to live a life of her own. [IMDB]

Ooh, sounds like one young girl’s strange, erotic journey from Milan to Minsk.

The Color Purple has gone from book to film to stage musical and back to film again. And here we have a nice art deco-style poster for the new film adaptation of the musical. I like this one a lot, it looks like socialist realist propaganda art.

I’m every bit as excited for Jason Statham to play an ass-kicking beekeeper as I was for Ben Affleck playing an ass-kicking accountant. And I’m loving this bee-themed, yellow-and-black poster for it. There’s no reason to be subtle when you’ve got Jason Statham playing an ass-kicking beekeeper.

But whoy do dey caw ‘im da beekeepah?

Wew because ‘e keeps beez, doesn’ e’, Avi.

“Protect the hive.” I love it. I hope the next poster is just a close crop on Statham’s head. “This honey doesn’t need a comb.”

Here’s the poster for The Maestro, starring Bradley Cooper as Leonard Bernstein, a role for which many people criticized his prosthetic nose (yes, the term “Jewface” briefly trended). I don’t really have an opinion about that, but I’m sick of movies trying to convince me that conducting an orchestra is tiring work. The baton is lighter than a pencil, man, maybe do some cardio.

Here’s the other poster for Fair Play, only in this one, the actors’ names line up. Nice!

Did you know Phoebe Dynevor plays an American in this? I’ve never seen her in anything before but I can tell just by this mouth position that she’s British.

Ooh, an Alexander Payne movie starring Paul Giamatti? And Da’Vine Joy Randolph? She’s so good she briefly made me thankful I’d watched The Idol. Anyway, the poster doesn’t have to do much heavy lifting here. Yes I will see this.

Damn, Annette Bening looks like she’s going to beat my ass. I’m not even going to say anything else about this poster, I’m too intimidated.

“Smell the gun” is my favorite Spinal Tap album.

He’s obviously telling us to be quiet, because this is a “silent night.” And shushing people with a gun is ironic because guns are loud.

That’s Joel Kinnaman, by the way. How many of you got it on the first try? I bet you guessed “Luke something” first. Wikipedia is now telling me that Joel Kinnaman is Swedish, but I feel like I’ve been Mandela Effect’d here because I could’ve sworn this guy was Australian. All Australian actors are named Joel or Luke or Jason.

This is the poster for Angus Cloud from Euphoria’s posthumous star turn in Your Lucky Day, a movie about a guy who commits a murder in the process of stealing a winning lottery ticket. It’s a cool poster that re-envisions the magazine-page mask Cloud’s character wears in the film. I know it’s different because the actual mask in the trailer has “CUM” written on it in fairly big letters, and there’s no way I was going to miss that.

Hold up. Glisten? They named a character in a children’s story GLISTEN? Was there any oversight on this at all?

“Glisten” is one of those words for which it’s almost impossible to find a non-sexual application. It’s up there with “tumescent.” You don’t name a children’s cartoon “Tumescent.”

And here we have the poster for… uh… Love Virtually. That guy looks like he’s so tired from jacking off to that headset.

I have this thing where I’ve been trained to tune out pretty much any comedian with an overly-aggressive personal style. It’s either habit or some form of self-preservation stemming from too many years of attending open mics. Most comedians I know also have some form of this. Anyway, I’m getting that same vibe from the lead of Adventures of the Naked Umbrella. And the title is almost a verbal manifestation of the same phenomenon.

(Yes, I know Jeremy Davies was good in Spanking The Monkey).

What was I saying about an aggressive personal style? That kind of plays in the art world.

That’s all for now, folks. I will have some less dumb posts coming, I promise*.

*No refunds.