You will meet Tammy ("Bridesmaids" actress Melissa McCarthy, reviews), an unemployed woman who discovers her husband is having an affair and decides to go on a road trip with her alcoholic, foul-mouthed, diabetic grandmother (Susan Sarandon).
Earth to Echo (reviews) is described as a "found-footage" meets "Explorers" and "E.T.". After receiving a bizarre series of encrypted messages, a group of kids embark on an adventure with an alien who needs their help.
Director Scott Derrickson brings us the supernatural thriller "Deliver Us from Evil" (reviews). NY police officer Ralph Sarchie (Eric Bana) investigates a series of crimes. He joins forces with an unconventional priest, schooled in the rituals of exorcism, to combat the possessions that are terrorizing their city.
Pamela McClintock of THR:
One of America's favorite sweethearts -- Melissa McCarthy -- goes up against holdover Transformers: Age of Extinction at the Fourth of July box office, along with a slew of other films hoping to provide a picnic for all segments of the movie-going audience.
Still, with no massive tentpole opening (Age of Extinction rolled out last weekend), revenue isn't expected to match last year's holiday frame, when Despicable Me 2 grossed a whopping $143.1 million between Wednesday and Sunday. To date, North American revenue for the summer is already down a steep 15 percent.
McCarthy's Tammy, marking the feature directorial debut of her husband, Ben Falcone, opens everywhere Wednesday alongside family film Earth to Echo, supernatural horror title Deliver Us From Evil and conservative author and filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza's documentary America.
Age of Extinction is expected to set off the biggest fireworks with a Wednesday-Sunday gross in the $55 million to $60 million range. The movie has already amassed north of $300 million in worldwide ticket sales.
Tammy will easily crush the new offerings with a $45 million to $50 million debut, considering McCarthy and Sandra Bullock's The Heat took in $47.2 million during the same stretch last year after opening the weekend before. Warner Bros. and New Line are being more conservative, saying $40 million and $45 million.
The $20 million road-trip comedy is a key test for McCarthy and Falcone as a filmmaking team, and is getting ravaged in early reviews. Co-written and produced by the pair, Tammy stars McCarthy as a fed-up burger joint worker who leaves her husband behind for a trip with her grandmother (Susan Sarandon) to Niagara Falls.
Tammy also stars Falcone, Kathy Bates, Dan Aykroyd, Allison Janney, Toni Collette and Sandra Oh.
Screen Gems and producer Jerry Bruckheimer are aiming for a $20 million opening for Deliver Us From Evil, the summer's first studio horror film about a New York cop (Eric Bana) who teams with a renegade priest (Edgar Ramirez) schooled in exorcisms to eradicate a series of possessions striking New York City. The movie, directed by Scott Derrickson and costing roughly $30 million to produce, is inspired by the book co-written by real life cop Ralph Sarchie.
Relativity Media hopes to ignite the family market with Earth to Echo, about a tiny alien robot befriended by humans. Disney made the found-footage film, but put it into turnaround last summer. Relativity paid a modest $13 million to acquire the movie and do re-shoots.
Earth to Echo should gross $16 million to $19 million over the five-day holiday stretch.
A wild card is conservative author and filmmaker Dinesh D'Souza's documentary America, which expands nationwide after opening in Houston and Atlanta last weekend. America hopes to match the $6.5 million nationwide launch of D'Souza's hit documentary 2016: Obama's America two years ago. That film went on to become the No. 2 political documentary of all time with $33.4 million in ticket sales.
Lionsgate is distributing America, which debunks the narrative that the United States has been a force of evil across the world through a combination of historical re-creations and interviews with some of the country's harshest critics.
No comments:
Post a Comment