Will 'The Grinch' Steal the Box-Office Title This Weekend?
by EG
The new version of the Dr. Seuss story The Grinch looks likely to be the number-one movie this weekend, but it's not the only new movie hitting theaters. Read on for details.
Universal and Illumination's CG animated The Grinch, the latest adaptation of the classic Dr. Seuss holiday tale, started off its North American box-office run Thursday night with a promising $2.2 million in previews.
With a Grinch voiced this time out by Benedict Cumberbatch, tracking continues to be revised upwards for the $75 million pic, which is expected to see green with a domestic opening of $63 million-$65 million, if not higher. (Family titles aren't generally known for huge preview numbers.)
Directed by Scott Mosier and Yarrow Cheney, the film's voice cast also includes Rashida Jones, Kenan Thompson, Angela Lansbury, Cameron Seely and Pharrell Williams, who narrates the tale about the infamous Grinch who tries to ruin Christmas for the residents of Whoville. The last film about the infamous grouch was Ron Howard's 2000 live-action version How The Grinch Stole Christmas, voiced by Jim Carrey.
Among the weekend's other two nationwide offerings, the J.J. Abrams produced World War II zombie pic Overlord grossed $900,000 in previews for a projected debut of $10 million-$12 million. Paramount's $35 million horror-thriller boasts the advantage of being the sole new offering for the younger genre crowd. It also lords over the other new offerings in terms of reviews, with a current Rotten Tomatoes score of 82 percent, versus 57 percent for The Grinch and 51 percent for The Girl in the Spider's Web.
Overlord's up-and-coming cast includes Jovan Adepo, Wyatt Russell, Pilou Asbaek, Mathilde Ollivier, John Magaro and Iain de Caestecker. Julius Avery directed the R-rated film, which follows a group of American paratroopers who drop into Nazi-occupied France on the eve of D-Day, only to discover the horrors of a Nazi lab carrying out terrifying and supernatural experiments that bring the dead back to life.
The Girl in the Spider's Web, starring The Crown's Claire Foy and directed by Fede Alvarez, earned $635,000 Thursday night. The $43 million, R-rated movie looks to open in the $8 million-$13 million range, and it remains to be seen whether it can successfully revive The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo film franchise and book series.
Get the rest of the story at The Hollywood Reporter.
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