This Week In Movie Posters/Box Office Round Up, November 6th

We're coming off the third-worst movie attendance weekend of 2023, but feast your eyes on these new posters!

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Box Office Round Up

Not much interesting to report at the box office this week. Five Nights At Freddy’s followed up its record-breaking opening weekend (wild, I know, but true) with a massive 76% drop this weekend. But that’s somewhat to be expected with a movie that had a surprise $100 million opening despite being available to stream on Peacock. Everyone who wanted to see it came on opening night, it seems. It nonetheless made another $19 million domestically to repeat at number one.

Overall, ticket sales were the third lowest of any weekend this year, and one of those was Super Bowl weekend. It didn’t help that instead of Dune 2 (or as I like to call it, Dune 2: Your Mom Dune 2 Guys at Once)—which was originally set to open but was pushed back because of the writer and actor strikes—we got… uh… What Happens Later, a Meg Ryan-directed rom-com starring David Duchovny, and The Marsh King’s Daughter, from Neil Burger starring Daisy Ridley.

Would you believe that both of those opened on more than 1,000 screens this weekend? (Earning $1.5m and $849K, respectively, for the nine and 13 spots). Probably you’ve never heard of them, but again, an actor’s strike that keeps Meg Ryan and David Duchovny from doing press tours can’t help.

Radical, starring Eugenio Derbez, a Spanish language teaching drama, opened on less than 500 screens but earned $2.7m (almost double the Meg Ryan rom-com). Killers of the Flower Moon slid only 25% this weekend, its third, bringing its total to $52m domestic and $119m worldwide. It cost $200m to make, but it was also made by Apple, which is a tech company. And the cool thing about the tech industry is that they’re not bound by normal math. They use SPACE MATH, where up is down, left is right, profits are infinite and who are we to judge? You want your Scorsese movies, don’t you!? Yeah, I thought so, so maybe shut up for a while and just enjoy it, stupid.

This Week In Movie Posters

Speaking of movies you probably didn’t remember were coming out, it’s another poster for The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes! It’s this fall’s second most-embarrassing attempt to revive old IP behind Wonka.

Anyway, what a poster! It’s got snakes, roses, a hand fingering some thorns… hey, if you can’t decide what to get for your generic tattoo, this poster has you covered. I feel like I’m at a boardwalk somewhere! I can practically hear the seagulls and smell the novelty t-shirts.

(Why do the snakes get to be in the poster but not the songbirds? Seems sus).

Yes, It Follows has a sequel, and it’s called “They Follow.” With news that big, why bother with anything but the words? My sources tell me that David Robert Mitchell stole a page from James Cameron and just went into the pitch meeting, wrote “It Follows” on a chalkboard, then erased the It and put a They and changed the Ls to pound symbols. They Fo££ow. The execs were sold.

A lot of people cracked jokes about this, but I loved It Follows and I also thought Mitchell’s follow-up, Under The Silver Lake was a masterpiece. I’d generally rather a director do something new than do a sequel (unless it’s The Accountant or Master and Commander) but in my mind, this guy is two for two and has done enough to earn my cautious optimism. (Someday I will actually watch his first movie, The Myth of the American Sleepover).

The way Godzilla is grabbing the M and the X with his lil’ Godzilla claws makes me think he’s about to put his wiener through the hole in the A. Maybe it’s the look on his face. That’s the look of a monster about to expose himself.

Be careful what you wish for! Okay, I wish for… an old man playing a lute! Wait, no! Dangit!

I like that the tagline is “This ain’t no fairytale,” like they’re going to be all hard and edgy, and then their way to illustrate this edginess was by having him bite the gingerbread cookie’s head off. He bit the head first?? NO WAY, THIS DUDE IS SAVAGE!

I feel like Ludacris either needs to stay Ludacris or embrace Chris Bridges. Chris “Ludacris” Bridges feels like an apology.

Anyway, points for correctly lining up the names and faces.

I don’t know what this movie is about and I’m kind of over Jesse Eisenberg’s… whole deal at this point, but damned if “MANODROME” isn’t an incredible title. The Manosphere? Oh no, my friend, you’re in the MANODROME now. You’re going to have to fight the other meninists and men’s rights activists to the death. Fight! Fight! Fight!

Now that I think about it, Jesse Eisenberg as an embittered woman-hater does seem like solid casting. Sometimes I talk myself into stuff.

Ralphie, a New York Uber driver, is struggling to make ends meet with his pregnant partner, Sal. Ralphie is introduced to an intense all-male self-help group by a friend, and after suffering a breakdown, he descends into madness. [Wiki]

Didn’t Eisenberg kind of already do this in The Art of Self-Defense? Whatever, I’m in. The director is South African so hopefully it’ll be a little weird. (South Africans are all a little weird being the implication here).

“Before Jigsaw’s end, his most personal game began.”

Boy, they’re really trying to thread a needle with that tagline, aren’t they? Sounds like a complicated timeline.

“Sure, I may have killed thousands of people in the past decade using an elaborate series of diabolical torture traps, but this time? It’s personal.”

“Godzilla Minus One” sounds like it’s using the opposite strategy of Alien$ and They Fo££ow. Gozilla Minus One! Now with even less Godzilla! Maybe it’s like an origin story? Ugh, I’m going to have to look this up, aren’t I.

Post war Japan is at its lowest point when a new crisis emerges in the form of a giant monster, baptized in the horrific power of the atomic bomb. [IMDB]

I still don’t fully understand the title, but then how much do you really need to know about the plot of a giant monster movie, anyway. And a cool poster.

Hard not to like these paintbrush-style posters for The Killer. Great cheekbones on that guy too.

Dream Scenario, in case you missed my write up, is A24’s new movie in which Nic Cage keeps showing up in people’s dreams, and he gets famous for it. Cool poster, I like how the DREAM looks like it’s about to bonk right into his crotch. Hate when you get wanged in the ding dong by big yellow text.

Yellow! Seems to be the theme this week.

This poster for Don’t Tell Larry is gaslighting me. I know the main guy in the hat is Ed Helms, but the poster and IMDB page keep trying to tell me it’s someone named Kiel Kennedy. Come on, man, I know Ed Helms when I see him.

After lying to her new eccentric coworker Larry about a company party, an ambitious corporate flunky must deal with the deadly consequences. [IMDB]

Eh? I’ll give it a solid “might see.”

Melissa McCarthy playing a genie in a movie from the writer of Love Actually? Shoot me full of poison!

The sparks lead me to believe that she’s doing some bibbity bobbity boo stuff with her magic finger. Can genies do that? I thought genies were more like “A la kazaam!” and Middle Eastern-coded. Sparkle fingers seem more like a fairy thing to me. This is mythical appropriation or something.

Also this is just altogether too many layers of clothes. I can’t tell where Melissa McCarthy’s shawl stops and her overcoat begin. And then you’re going to add elbow-length gloves to the ensemble? She looks like she’s wearing the thing that dries your car at the car wash. I think maybe the costume designer needs to cut back on the coffee.

I guess this is about Daniel Radcliffe’s stunt double, who got paralyzed while shooting one of the Harry Potter movies. I don’t know what else to say here, but that does look like a cool wheelchair.

Sparks AND flying dirt clods?? You just know this is going to be an exciting thrill ride dads love.

One of my readers sent me the trailer for this the other day saying “this is the worst trailer I’ve ever seen.”

That Bon Jovi needle drop is pretty terrible (not to mention the slowed-down dramatic version of it used as a score, ha!) but the rest of it? I might be blinded by my love of Gosling and Blunt, but it looks okay to me.

David Leitch directed Deadpool 2 and Atomic Blonde, which were both way better than they had any right to be, but also Bullet Train and Hobbes & Shaw, which both passed right through my brain without making a single mark. Just zip, right through, like someone Men In Black flashy-thinged me during the end credits. Anyway, I’d give this one a chance.

BIG! YELLOW! TEXT!

“Every good thing in this world started with a dream.”

Good thing? See, maybe this is why this whole premise feels off. Because up until now, I always thought of Willy Wonka as an eccentric chocolate magnate who tortured unruly children (when I thought of him at all). Now, come to find out, he’s aspirational? Really hustled his way to the top! Rich Dad Chocolate Dad! Hustle grind win. God this sucks.

When the trailer for this hit, people on Twitter seemed mad that Matt Reeves didn’t direct this one (unlike the three previous Planet of the Apes movies). I haven’t liked one of these since the last one Matt Reeves didn’t direct (Rise of the Planet of the Apes), and his relentless humorlessness never really works for me (The Batman? Worse than a root canal. Doesn’t having a stupid Joker tie-in ruin the entire noir thing you’re going for there? Anyway, we probably don’t need to relitigate this one).

I’m not sure the Maze Runner guy (Wes Ball, who directed this one) is the person to fix this franchise, but then how many ape movies does one really need, anyway? It could just be time to let this one go.

Or maybe just stop with all the CGI and let Andy Serkis go buck wild in his ball suit. How much better would that be?

Family Switch? I liked this better when it was called Wife Swap! (I had to look this up to make sure I hadn’t hallucinated it; there was also a Trading Spouses).

I must be getting old because I actually laughed at the baby with a dog toy in his mouth. At least with this poster the Ed Helms guy is actually Ed Helms.