The last official box office weekend of January (January 31 falls on a Friday next week) finds the month ending on a bit of a whimper with no major wide release set to really blow the top off of the box office. This will allow Bad Boys For Life to maintain its number one position while Guy Ritchie’s return to form with The Gentlemen, could put down decent, yet unspectacular numbers.
Director Guy Ritchie is coming off of the billion-dollar worldwide success of the live-action Aladdin but his latest release, The Gentlemen, has him back in a comfort zone that began with Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels & Snatch. The comedic crime-caper has a star-studded cast including Matthew McConaughey, Charlie Hunnam, Hugh Grant, Henry Golding, Michelle Dockery, Jeremy Strong, and Colin Farrell and the should ensure some interest from the target audience that is skewing very male for the film. Reviews have been kind for the film as well at 76% fresh as of this writing and STX Entertainment was smart holding screenings early to build solid word of mouth. Another smart move on their part was paying only $7 million to get U.S. rights from Miramax for the film so the bar for success is very low which could the film into a modest hit. Entertainment Film, Roadshow and Miramax are handing its rollout overseas, where the movie has already made $18.4 million to date. I’m predicting The Gentlemen opens to about $13-15 million this weekend.
Also opening this weekend is a horror film called The Turning, starring Mackenzie Davis, Finn Wolfhard, and Brooklynn Prince. The film is a thriller about a nanny tasked with taking care of two disturbed orphans and is based on the 1989 spooky ghost tale. While the trailer has garnered a lot of attention because it makes the film look surprisingly good, the movie hasn’t really gained a lot of traction in regards to other marketing. At the end of the day, it’s another generic horror film released during the month of January. The film is 27% rotten on Rotten Tomatoes with 11 reviews counted and I doubt it will get much better from there. Given that it’s PG-13, I still think it will entice a younger demographic to check it out so I’m predicting an opening of about $7-8 million.
That leaves Bad Boys For Life to take the top spot and it’s a task it will easily accomplish. Word of mouth has been good and the lack of true competition is also in its favor. In fact, this may carry over into next weekend since there id very little competition then as well. As for this weekend, I think Bad Boys For Life grosses about $28-30 million this weekend.
