Sony will own the first weekend of November at the box office, with the second frame of the Culver City lot’s Venom: The Last Dance down around 60%, or $20 million, for No. 1, followed by the studio’s release of Miramax’s adult drama Here.
Here, which reps the Forrest Gump reteam of filmmaker Robert Zemeckis, scribe Eric Roth and stars Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, is expected to do around $7M with an eye on hopefully pulling older adults out again this weekend after they made a date for Focus Features’ Conclave last weekend ($6.6M opening).
It remains to be seen whether Here slots in second place, giving Sony the frame’s 1-2 punch.
The question is whether audiences will go along with watching a generations drama story about various families on the same property/house at a skewed-degree angle. Hanks and Wright are technologically de-aged to their former 1980s/1990s selves, their storyline being the aorta of the story. Critics on Rotten Tomatoes responded with a 33% Rotten grade after the pic world premiered at AFI Fest on Friday.
Here was fully financed by the former Miramax administration of Bill Block for $50M; he is a producer on the movie. Block also produced last year’s Miramax Oscar winner The Holdovers, which sold to Focus in a $30M global rights deal. Here is a domestic distribution deal for Sony, which has been in business with Hanks of late on the 2022-2023 drama A Man Called Otto, which saw half of its wide-release audience over 55 years of age; that pic ended out with a $15.4M four-day opening after a three-step platform release and ended its domestic run with $64.2M. Sony also had the Hanks movies A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, which opened to $13.2M pre-Covid in 2019 and ended with $61.7M stateside, and the World War II movie Greyhound, which it unloaded to Apple TV+ during the pandemic.
Here was originally planned as a three-step platform with an exclusive debut in New York City and Los Angeles on November 5, limited expansion on November 22, and the wide blast on November 27 before Sony moved it up to this weekend as a complete wide release.
The box office isn’t going to go back to some energy until November 15, when Amazon MGM Studios’ Dwayne Johnson-Chris Evans Christmas action feature Red One opens to an expected $36M+, followed by Wicked and Gladiator II on November 22 and Moana 2 on November 27.
Also opening wide this weekend on 1,200 runs is Samuel Goldwyn’s Liam Neeson action movie Absolution, as well as Viva’s animated movie Hitpig, about a bounty-hunter pig who finds himself trekking the globe with a free-spirited elephant he intended to capture. Andy Serkis, Rainn Wilson and Jason Sudeikis have voice parts in a movie directed by Cinzia Angelini and David Feiss.
Here showtimes start at 2 p.m. on Thursday, Halloween night.