Clint Eastwood Takes On Shang-Chi This Weekend

Tough guy Clint Eastwood brings his take on masculinity to theaters this weekend with Cry Macho, a new Western-themed drama. The film will challenge the top movie of the last two weeks, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Cry Macho will also debut on HBO Max, which might limit its box-office traffic. Read on for details.

Via Box Office Mojo.

After Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings dominated the box office for two weeks in a row, it faces some competition this weekend from Cry Macho, which sees Clint Eastwood both back in the director’s chair and as leading man. However, the theatrical exclusive Shang-Chi has already shown itself to have solid legs, and there’s a good chance it will reign supreme once again this weekend. It dropped 54% in its second weekend, and a similar hold this weekend would bring in around $16 million. The latest Marvel superhero film hit $150 million on the 12th day of its release, beating Black Widow by four days. At the rate it is going, we may see Shang-Chi surpass Black Widow’s $183.2 million gross by next weekend, which would make it the best grossing film since Bad Boys For Life, released all the way back in January 2020.

Warner Bros.’ Cry Macho, based on the 1975 book of the same name by N. Richard Nash, opens in 3,800 theaters in addition to streaming on HBO Max. The film sees Eastwood, now 91 years old, playing a former rodeo star who gets hired by his ex-boss to bring the man’s son back from Mexico. The book was on Eastwood’s radar in the '80s, and after changing hands a few times, including nearly being made with Arnold Schwarzenegger, it came back full circle to Eastwood, who filmed it during the pandemic.

The modern-day western has a screenplay by Nick Schenk, who wrote the last two films that Eastwood both starred in and directed: The Mule from 2018 and Gran Torino from 2008. Both films showed that Eastwood was still a box-office draw, with Gran Torino grossing $270 million worldwide and The Mule grossing $174.8 million. Expectations are muted for Cry Macho, though. While we have seen some relative successes among WB’s same day HBO Max debuts, they’ve been franchise films (Godzilla vs. Kong, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, Space Jam: A New Legacy), and the dramas have under-performed. In The Heights was the biggest grosser of the non-franchise films to simultaneously debut on HBO Max, and that only opened to $11.5 million and finished with $29.9 million, numbers which are in the range of Eastwood’s Richard Jewell and Trouble with the Curve. Reviews for Cry Macho have been mixed so far, with a 51% Rotten Tomatoes score.

Get the rest of the story at Box Office Mojo.