Will It Be a Merry Time at the Box Office? |
There’s a lot riding on this holiday season—and we don’t just mean getting through dinner without arguing with your family about politics.
I’m Rebecca Ford, and I’ll be watching closely as a slew of Oscar contenders make their way to theaters over the next week. The stakes are high for several of them. Avatar: Fire and Ash opens today; the third installment in James Cameron’s epic series is estimated to earn around $100 million domestically and $350 million worldwide this opening weekend. That would be on track with the first two films’ massive takes (each earned more than $2 billion worldwide in the end), and a real success story for Hollywood to end the year on. The film, like its predecessors, is also a major Oscar contender, and a big box office win will only help its chances ahead of voting in the new year.
The Testament of Ann Lee, which opens in select theaters Christmas Day, was snubbed in some key categories like song and score at the Golden Globes nominations last week. That’s a surprising outcome for a musical with a knockout performance by Amanda Seyfried. If the film plays well with audiences, maybe voters will take notice and make sure to seek it out over the holidays.
Also opening Christmas Day is Marty Supreme, as Timothée Chalamet has been pointing out for months now (“Marty Supreme Christmas Day! Marty Supreme Christmas Day!”). An original story by Josh Safdie and Ronald Bronstein, the film needs to do well at the box office—particularly after a string of star-studded adult dramas have stumbled over the past months. If it does, it proves that there’s still power in a movie star promoting the heck out of a movie. The strong reviews and Oscar buzz will definitely help, but Chalamet’s tireless and unusual promotional effort will deserve the credit if Marty over-performs. Not only has he been making surprise appearances at screenings and promotional events, getting famous friends to wear his merch, and doing unusual interviews, he even hosted a table tennis invitational, which my colleague Chris Murphy attended in New York this week.
Marty Supreme is a showcase for Chalamet, but there are some killer supporting performances in it as well from less seasoned actors, including Tyler, the Creator, who recently spoke to me about his feature-film acting debut. The music phenom is hoping to disappear into this role—and not be distracting because he’s already a celebrity. “I have a face, my gap [teeth], I have a voice, I have a cadence, how I speak—it’s easy to get caught up in all that,” he told me. “And of course people are going to watch it and know it’s me. But I hope that I just feel like I’m a part of the movie.” In my opinion he succeeds, but audiences will get to weigh in themselves over the holidays.
I’m hopeful that these movies will perform, and curious how that will affect the Oscar race. The Awards Insider newsletter will be back in the new year as we hit the ground running with the Critics Choice Awards and Golden Globes in January. Happy holidays, and see you at the movies! |
