By January is a fairly dead month for cinemagoing in general, and this year appears to be no different going by box-office projections coming in from long range forecasts at BoxOfficePro.com.
There’s one wide release this week, the $40 million-budgeted Gerard Butler-led heist sequel “Den of Thieves 2: Pantera,” which is reportedly aiming for a domestic opening of around $11-13 million by end of Sunday. In addition, the expansion of the Robbie Williams biopic “Better Man” is set to pull in just $2 million.
Those aren’t good numbers, but luckily there does appear to be one potential hit on the horizon – Leigh Whannel’s “Wolf Man”. The reinvention of the Universal classic monster opens January 17th and is reportedly on track for a fairly healthy $20-25 million start.
That puts it nearly in the ballpark of Whannell’s 2020 reinvention of “The Invisible Man” which opened to $28.2 million and ultimately went on to gross $144 million from just a $7 million budget.
Whereas that was shot in Australia, “Wolf Man” was filmed in New Zealand and is said to boast the same $7 million budget – meaning Universal should be very quickly into profit on the movie.
Another wide opener in January is the Mel Gibson-directed “Flight Risk” starring Mark Wahlberg. The contained thriller hits on the 24th and unfortunately it’s predicted to debut with just $6-10 million – a notable step down for Gibson as a director from his last film, “Hacksaw Ridge.” which opened to $15.1 million.
No estimates are out for Steven Soderbergh’s “Presence” as yet, that film opening in limited release on the 24th, or titles hitting right at the end of the month including “Companion,” “You’re Cordially Invited,” “Dog Man” and “Love Me”.
Two other notable films debuting in January are straight to streaming – the Jamie Foxx-Cameron Diaz action comedy “Back in Action” on Netflix on the 17th, and the Michelle Yeoh-led “Star Trek: Section 31” movie on Paramount+ on the 24th.
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