Liam Neeson Fights His Way into Theaters This Weekend
by EG
Liam Neeson's latest action movie, Memory, will hit theaters this weekend. It's the biggest new release, but it will have a hard time contending with holdovers The Bad Guys and Sonic 2. One holdover that probably won't have a shot at the top spot is Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore, which continues its troubled run this week. Read on for details.
Via Box Office Mojo.
The past month was the year’s busiest at the box office with three of the year’s top five openers, and the past weekend saw four films gross above $10 million, a feat that surprisingly has not been achieved since last June. Things slow to a crawl this weekend, though, as we are one week out from the Marvel-in-waiting Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness which will kick off the summer box-office season. Though this week’s only new wide release is expected to open soft, there is still juice left to squeeze out of the current slate before the arrival of the first MCU film since Spider-Man: No Way Home. This may be the lowest grossing weekend since February, but a blockbuster packed summer is right around the corner.
The only film going wide this week is the Liam Neeson action-thriller Memory, getting a release by Open Road. Directed by Martin Campbell (Goldeneye, Casino Royale), the film is about an assassin (Neeson) who suffers from memory loss and is on the run from both the criminal organization he works for and the FBI. Guy Pearce and Monica Bellucci co-star. Memory is based on the Belgian book De zaak Alzheimer by Jef Geeraerts as well as its 2002 Belgian film adaptation. Critics are unenthusiastic about the remake, and it currently stands at 26% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Memory is Neeson’s fourth wide release, all from Open Road and Briarcliff, since the start of the pandemic. The Honest Thief in October 2020 and The Marksman in January 2021 were among the top grossers of the pre-vaccine era of the pandemic with $14.2 and $15.6 million respectively. However, those numbers would no longer qualify as solid in the current box office environment, and February’s release Blacklight fell short with only $9.6 million. Memory isn’t expected to exceed the low ceiling of Neeson’s recent releases, which have also been soft overseas, and it is uncertain if it will even make the top five this weekend.
As for the holdovers, the family films should continue to rule. The Bad Guys will likely take the top spot again after scoring the best opening for DreamWorks Animation since How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World in 2019 and their best non-sequel opening since The Boss Baby in 2017. The “A” CinemaScore suggests that the film will continue to play well, and there are no other animated films competing with it until Memorial Day weekend. Sonic the Hedgehog 2, the other major family film in theaters, may come in second place again. It is right on the cusp of the original’s $149 million cume (though the initial outbreak of Covid-19 ate into the first film’s gross), and any moment now it should become the highest grossing video game adaptation domestically.
Get the rest of the story at Box Office Mojo.