The Warner Bros wave at the box office continues this weekend with New Line’s Final Destination: Bloodlines, the first sequel in 14 years in the 25 year old horror franchise, eyeing a series record start between $35M-$40M at 3,400 locations.
The global outlook for Bloodlines is $70M with 74 territories going with U.S.
The Zach Lipovsky-Adam B. Stein directed R-rated feature is very strong with women under 25 both in unaided awareness and first choice, followed by guys under 25. The best Final Destination opening to date belongs to 2009’s The Final Destination which posted a $27.4M 3-day. Through five movies, the Final Destination titles have minted north of $666M worldwide.
The first installment in the series was written by Jeffrey Reddick, and intended to be an X-Files episode, but he flipped it into a spec script. The set-up entails a group of people who escape death after one of them has a premonition that a tragic catastrophe is about to occur. However, each of them die by bizarre circumstances. The sixth film centers around a college student with violent nightmares, who returns home to find the one person who can break the cycle and save her family from the horrific fate that inevitably awaits them. Rotten Tomatoes reviews are at 93% certified fresh. Previews start around 3:30pm.
Meanwhile, horror doesn’t die entire with Bloodlines flowing at 3,400 sites, as Warner Bros’ own Sinners is expected to ease another -30% with a fifth weekend of $15.4M. Final outlook for the Michael B. Jordan starring, Ryan Coogler directed vampire movie is around $270M stateside.
Disney’s third weekend of MCU’s Thunderbolts* looks to dip another -40% in weekend 3 with around $19M.
Meanwhile, The Weeknd aka Abel Tesfaye has a multi-platform experiment going on with his lead star title from Trey Edward Shults, Hurry Up Tomorrow, set to hit theaters this Friday timed to his new sold-out tour “After Hours Til Dawn” kicking off Glendale, AZ. The movie, which also stars Jenna Ortega, was independently financed by Live Nation to the tune of $15M, and is named after Weeknd’s January album of the same name. The tour is expected to be the highest grossing in North America this year with $400M. The movie however is only expected to open to mid to high single digits. Wednesday fan screenings this week, we hear, generated $1M. Previews start Thursday at 6PM. It’s a distribution deal for Lionsgate, so if the movie makes $2M or $20M, the studio ala Megalopolis walks away with a paycheck. That said, Lionsgate jumped at the opportunity to team with the Weeknd and support his vision. The 4x Grammy winner dazzled exhibitors with a mini-concert at CinemaCon to jazz them up for the film which follows a version of himself, an insomniac musician who encounters a mysterious stranger. No reviews yet on RT. Not a good outlook: Unaided awareness and first choice are in the very, very low single digits, under that of Ortega’s A24 genre comedy, Death of a Unicorn, which didn’t gallop into theaters with a $5.7M opening and final U.S./Canada take under $13M.