And now begins the February lift-off following January’s not-great opener. Though there will obviously be some changes that give it a bit more heft, this January saw a noticeable dip as compared to recent years with only a $291 million total. That’s the worst total since 2007, with its $266 million, with all other recent years easily making it over the $300 million mark. One could easily blame President Trump for this - people are out protesting and reading more news - but there’s also the lack of a hold-over hit likeThe Revenantlast year. The closest we got isLa La LandandMoonlight, which are doing well but don’t have Leonardo “I Make It Rain” DiCaprio in the lead role.
As expected, horror movies are doing well.M. Night Shyamalan’sSplithas been the top grosser the past two weeks and early predictions have the movie going three for three this week. On Friday, however, it wasF. Javier Gutierrez’sRingsthat won out with $5.6 million, beating outSplit’s still-impressive $4.8 million. The film, which seems to be at once a sequel and a reboot toGore Verbinski’s scary and stylishThe Ringand the less-sufferableRing 2, both serving as remakes of Japan’sRingufranchise, has name recognition, which may have been just the thing it needed. Mind you, reception to this film has been unkind in the extreme, even for cheap, pointless horror movies made with the clear intention to cash in on a long-dead property. That being said,Splitis close on its tail and we might be seeing a showdown by the end of tomorrow.
The Space Between Usis not looking very good in terms of returns. The sci-fi romance, itself an attempt to reconfigure the chemistry ofThe Fault in Our Starsin a science fiction setting, came in with $1.4 million on Friday for STX, which took the movie out of Relativity’s hands when they started bankruptcy proceedings. Meanwhile, Sony Pictures Classics look to have another mediocrity on their hands withTaylor Hackford’sThe Comedian, which took in $323, 000, and Magnolia’s big Oscar hopeful,Raoul Peck’s bracingly relevantI Am Not Your Negro, came in with about $201,000 in its limited run. With the Super Bowl airing tomorrow, it’s a bit hard to predict where the wind will blow but it will be a battle betweenSplitandRings, a scrappy auteurist B-movie or a stale studio product that should never have been.
