The Weekend Warrior: Insurgent, The Gunman, Do You Believe?

After the first great weekend at the box office in some time, things should continue to hold up well with more schools being released for spring break, leading up to the Easter holiday weekend in early April. Last week’s Cinderella should continue to play well although it has to face three strong contenders with one of them likely to replace it as #1 at the box office.

For those who just can’t get enough young adult pablum, this week brings the second chapter in the adaptation of Veronica Roth’s sci-fi romantic coming-of-age drama The Divergent Series: Insurgent (Summit/Lionsgate), once again starring Shailene Woodley, Theo James, Ansel Elgort and Miles Teller, joined by Kate Winslet and fellow Oscar winner Octavia Spencer as well as Oscar nominee Naomi Watts, Ashley Judd, Jai Courtney, Zoe Kravitz, Maggie Q and Ray Stevenson.

It’s an even more impressive cast than the original Divergent, which opened in 3,936 theaters last March, where it made $22.7 million opening day and $54.6 million its opening weekend on its way to $151 million domestic gross and about the same amount overseas. That isn’t quite as big as other hit franchises delivered by the young adult novel-reading audience, specifically “The Twilight Saga” and “The Hunger Games” (which will conclude later this year), but “The Divergent Series” is at the top of the next level of genre movies geared towards women with their romantic undertones. In other words, it made money unlike other attempts that falter at the box office.

What has greatly helped the movie so far is the popularity of Woodley, who already has a fairly strong fanbase, first from her ABC Family show “The Secret Life of the American Teenager” but also from films like Alexander Payne’s Oscar-nominated The Descendants, for which she got a lot of attention. Since the release of the first Divergent movie, she also starred in the adaptation of the popular romantic novel The Fault in Our Stars, which fared well in the early summer, opening with $48 million and grossing $124 million total domestic.

Her co-star Ansel Elgort plays Tris’ brother in this movie, and he’s also exploded in the last year thanks to playing Woodley’s romantic counterpart in “Fault.” Even Miles Teller has been building on his popularity teaming with Woodley in 2013’s The Spectacular Now, but he’s becoming even more popular due to his leading role in the Oscar-nominated Whiplash. And that’s not even counting the likes of Winslet, Watts and Spencer, three powerhouse actors who are doing rare franchise work with “The Divergent Series.”

Needless to say, having such a strong cast will definitely help the movie do better than it might have otherwise, particularly among those who haven’t read the books, although we may want to be reminded that having Oscar winning actors in their cast did nothing for YA movies like last year’s The Giver.

On the other hand, Insurgent is likely to take advantage of the slow roll-out of spring break with Friday and Sunday both being helped by schools being out in various regions. The real question is how this movie will affect last week’s blockbuster Cinderella or be affected by it. In theory, they both share the same female target audience, although that movie is definitely shooting for the family audience whereas Insurgent is shooting for teens and older and isn’t necessarily just going for women. Because it’s a sci-fi genre film with action, there’s a better chance of it being of interest to younger guys that may allow themselves to be dragged there on a date with the promise of action and visual FX.

In theory, the sequel factor will be in play where more people will go to see a sequel in theaters opening weekend rather than waiting, which should allow it to do open bigger—assuming that enough people liked the original movie to want to see the sequel.

We think this one will open around $60 million or slightly more, and it should also end up grossing slightly more than where the previous movie ended up as it doesn’t have any direct competition in its second weekend. Figure that it will probably cap off at around $170 million as Furious 7 is going to destroy everything when it opens in April.

You have to wonder what some of these distributors are thinking when they release an action-thriller like The Gunman (Open Road), starring Sean Penn trying to be the next Liam Neeson (or Colin Firth) by becoming an action star later in his years, just one week after Run All Night, an actual Neeson action-thriller that didn’t fare particularly well. Maybe they were hoping that Run All Night wouldn’t do that well (and it didn’t) so they could pick up the male audience that may not be as interested in Insurgent, but that didn’t work last week by programming Neeson’s movie against Cinderella.

One thing that Neeson’s latest movie didn’t have that The Gunman does is original Taken director Pierre Morel, who worked as a cinematographer for Luc Besson’s productions before transitioning into directing with the crime flick District B13. (The American remake of that film, Brick Mansions, starring the late Paul Walker, grossed just $20 million last April.) Taken was a huge hit for the director, followed by the weaker From Paris with Love, although it’s all about the casting and Morel has two Oscar-winning actors in this one with Penn joined by Javier Bardem.

This is a very different movie for Penn who has been more involved with high drama, having won Oscars for his performances in Milk and Clint Eastwood’s Mystic River, also appearing in Terrence Malick’s Oscar-nominated The Tree of Life. Over the past few years, Penn also appeared in lesser films like All The King’s Men and Fair Game, which failed to receive awards attention, but he also played a key role in Ruben Fleischer’s period action film Gangster Squad, which even with Ryan Gosling, Josh Brolin and Emma Stone only grossed $46 million.

Penn’s co-star, Javier Bardem, had a huge hit with the James Bond flick Skyfall in 2012, and has been quite hot since his own Oscar win for the Coen Brothers’ No Country for Old Men, but he’s pretty erratic, with his last movie, Ridley Scott’s The Counselor, being a huge bomb. With that in mind, it’s hard to think that either actor can get moviegoers (particularly males) into seats by doing something different, and it’s going to come down to the premise and how it’s marketed to have any sort of impact.

Considering how poorly Ride All Night did last weekend, it’s hard to think that The Gunman can do much better, especially as it has to face the second weekend of that movie (which received a strong “A-“ CinemaScore). On the other hand, The Gunman is being pitched more like a follow-up to American Sniper, which many will be aware has become the highest-grossing movie of 2014 domestically. Guys who enjoyed that will probably be more interested in this than Neeson’s follow-up to Taken 3 (which got creamed by “Sniper” at the box office) although Penn is no Bradley Cooper in terms of being an actor who appeals to guys.

We’re still slightly dubious that Penn’s attempt at becoming an action star can do much more than $10 million its opening weekend without the marketing push of a bigger studio and probably will end up with roughly $30 million or less as it won’t get far with Furious 7 on the horizon. 

The Gunman Review

The third wide release of the weekend couldn’t be any more different than the other two movies as it’s from the makers of last year’s surprise hit God’s Not Dead, which grossed a shocking $60.8 million after an impressive $9 million opening weekend in less than 800 theaters (see below). Their follow-up drama Do You Believe? (Pure Flix Entertainment) has a wildly diverse cast of actors we haven’t seen that much lately, including Sean Astin, Mira Sorvino, Lee Majors, Cybill Shepherd, Ted McGinley and Alexa PenaVega. They play (and I’m taking this directly from the plot summary since I haven’t seen the movie) “a dozen different souls-all moving in different directions, all longing for something more” whose lives interact.

Honestly, the Christian film genre is something I just haven’t gotten at all, maybe because I’ve seen very few of the movies, but the success of God’s Not Dead last year was followed a month later by the $91 million grossed by Heaven is for Real, which shows a thriving audience for the genre. Both of those movies have stumped me, because neither of them really advertised themselves much although they obviously were able to find their target audience with whatever they did.

Opening in over 500 more theaters than God’s Not Dead and with a stronger cast, I can only assume that Pure Flix Entertainment is giving their latest movie a similarly-focused marketing push to Christian audiences in the Midwest and Southern states, although I have yet to see anything here. If that audience is desperate for a movie that caters to their beliefs, than this is really their only choice in theaters right now.

God’s Not Dead seemed like more of a surprise, somewhat of a fluke, probably helped by its unconventional title. It’s hard to believe that Do You Believe? will follow the same course or even surpass that opening, although it should still do well enough to break into the top half of the Top 10, probably with somewhere between $7 and 9 million. It will likely gross $35 to 40 million if it’s received as well as its predecessor. 

This weekend last year saw the release of the first movie in the “Divergent Series,” appropriately called Divergent (Summit/Lionsgate), which introduced Shailene Woodley as Veronica Roth’s popular character Tris. The film opened in nearly 4,000 theaters to the tune of $54.6 million with a per-theater average of close to $14,000 per theater. Hoping to get some of the kids out of school for spring break, Disney released the family sequel Muppets Most Wanted, co-starring Tina Fey and Ricky Gervais, which didn’t do nearly as well as its predecessor, opening with just $17 million in 3,104 theaters for second place. The makers of this week’s Do You Believe? continued the tradition of religious films doing well with God’s Not Dead (Pure Flix), which grossed an outstanding $9.2 million in just 780 theaters, an average of $11,951, which was just slightly less than the average of Divergent. The Top 10 grossed around $130 million which should be bested by the combination of Insurgent and last week’s Cinderella.

This Week’s Updated Predictions –

1. The Divergent Series: Insurgent (Summit/Lionsgate) – $61 million N/A (same)

2. Cinderella (Disney) – $40.5 million -39% (down .3 million)

3. The Gunman (Open Road) – $9.3 million N/A (down .7 million)

4. Do You Believe? (Pure Flix) – $7.5 million N/A 

5. Run All Night (Warner Bros.) – $6.4 million -42%

6. Kingsman: The Secret Service (20th Century Fox) – $4.1 million -35% 

7. The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (Fox Searchlight) – $4 million -30%

8. Focus (Warner Bros.) – $3.2 million -45% (down .1 million)

9. Chappie (Sony) – $2.6 million -55% (down .1 million)

10. McFarland, USA (Disney) – $2.4 million -31%

Next Week: 

Kevin Hart tries to teach Will Ferrell how to be funny… in prison, that is… in the comedy Get Hard (Warner Bros.) while the Big Bang Theory’s Jim Parsons is teamed with Rihanna (possibly the oddest voice pairing ever) for the animated family comedy Home (DreamWorks Animation/Fox).

This Week’s Must-Sees

Can’t Stand Losing You: Surviving the Police (Cinema Libre)

Director: Andy Grieves

Stars: Andy Summers, Sting, Stewart Copeland

Of Note: If you’re fan of the Police (as I have been since their early days), then this documentary told from the perspective of guitarist Andy Summers is definitely a must-see. I saw it at DOC-NYC way back in 2012 when I also had a chance to interview Summers (which we’ll have later this week). Based on Summers’ book “One Train Later,” it’s a great look behind the scenes at the band who reunited in 2007 after decades off, showing that they could still sell out stadiums without having a new record to promote. Summers’ story and how the Police came together, then fall apart only to reunite almost 20 years later is told through his own words accompanied by the impressive number of pictures he took to capture that history. It will open in New York on Friday at the Village East Cinemas and then will open in L.A. on April 3. 

Interview with Andy Summers

Kumiko, The Treasure Hunter (Amplify)

Director: David Zellner

Stars: Rinko Kikuchi, David Zellner, Nathan Zellner, Nobuyuki Katsube, Shirley Venard

Of Note: Another festival favorite of mine, which premiered at Sundance in 2014 but I saw a few weeks later in Berlin, this stars Rinko Kikuchi (one of my favorite actresses thanks to movies like Babel, The Brothers Bloom and Pacific Rim) as a quiet Japanese woman living in Tokyo with her rabbit Bunzo who discovers a VHS tape of the Coen Brothers’ Fargo, which on learning is based on a true story, becomes obsessed with finding the suitcase full of cash buried by Steven Buscemi at the end of the movie. Her obsession takes her to North Dakota where things are very different than she thinks. 

Interview with the Zellner Brothers (Coming Soon!)

Danny Collins (Bleecker Street)

Director: Dan Fogelman

Stars: Al Pacino, Christopher Plummer, Jennifer Garner, Annette Bening, Bobby Cannavale

Of Note: Based on a true story, this dramedy has Pacino paying aging rocker Danny Collins who takes a break from his drugs and womanizing when he learns that John Lennon wrote him an encouraging letter thirty years earlier that he never received but might have changed the direction of his career. Realizing he needs a change, Danny steps away from his tour to go to New Jersey and visit his estranged son (Bobby Cannavale) who is afflicted with a possibly fatal disease.

Interview with Director Dan Fogelman (Coming Soon!)

Other Limited Releases of Note:

She’s Lost Control (Monument Releasing)

Writer/Director: Anja Marquardt

Stars: Brooke Bloom, Marc Menchaca, Dennis Boutsikaris

Of Note: Anja Marquardt’s directorial debut stars Brooke Bloom as sex surrogate Ronah who is one of the top therapists in New York, but who runs into problems maintaining a balance between her professional and personal needs when she meets Marc Menchaca’s erratic Johnny. After premiering at SXSW last year, it opens in New York on Friday and in L.A. on March 27. 

Jauja (Cinema Guild)

Director: Lisandro Alonso

Stars: Viggo Mortensen, Ghita Nørby, Diego Roman

Of Note: The Argentine filmmaker of Los Muertos returns with a film starring Viggo Mortensen as a Danish captain travelling across Patagonia in 1882 with his teen daughter Ingeborg (Ghita Norby), but when she disappears, he goes off looking for her and ends up getting lost in the wilderness. 

Accidental Love (Millennium Entertainment)

Director: “Stephen Greene”

Stars: Jake Gyllenhaal, James Marsden, Jessica Biel, Tracy Morgan, Catherine Keener, James Brolin, Kirstie Alley, Olivia Crocicchia

Of Note: If it’s surprising to see a comedy with such an amazing cast opening this weekend with little-to-no fanfare, maybe that’s because this is in fact the doomed David O. Russell film once called Nailed that was literally shut down in the middle of production years ago before Russell hit the big time with the hits The Fighter, Silver Linings Playbook and American Hustle. Based on Kristin Gore’s novel “Sammy’s Hill,” it stars Jessica Biel as a small-town reception who has a nail shot into her head by accident causing wild sexual urges, which of course, gets her into politics when a congressman (Gyllenhaal) tries to take advantage of her condition. (In case, there’s any question why this movie has been so problematic.) It’s been on VOD since Valentine’s Day, just because. 

Tracers (Lionsgate)

Director: Daniel Benmayor

Stars: Taylor Lautner, Rafi Gavron, Marie Avgeropoulos, Adam Rayner

Of Note: Taylor Lautner from “The Twilight Saga” returns with what sounds like another dumb action movie, this one having him play a guy who meets a woman who is part of a parkour crew that performs heists, which he joins, because why would anyone make this movie if not for the chance to have Taylor Lautner doing parkour? It’s another one of Lionsgate’s VOD specials. 

Growing Up and Other Lies (eOne Films)

Writers/Directors: Darren Grodsky, Danny Jacobs

Stars: Josh Lawson, Amber Tamblyn, Adam Brody, Danny Jacobs, Wyatt Cenac, Lauren Anne Miller

Of Note: In this dramedy, Josh Lawson plays Jake, a struggling New York artist who, before he returns home to Ohio, wants to relive with three friends the greatest adventure of their early 20s by walking the entire length of Manhattan, which gives them time to reopen old wounds. It opens in New York at the Quad Cinema and on various VOD platforms. 

There are a bunch of horror films opening on Friday, including two “travel thrillers” that premiered at the Toronto Film Festival last September and have played a number of festivals since…

Spring (Drafthouse Films)

Director: Justin Benson, Aaron Moorhead

Stars: Lou Taylor Pucci

Of Note: While backpacking across Europe to escape his past in the States, Lou Taylor Pussi’s Evan stops at a Italian village where he meets a mysterious woman named Louise, who is keeping a secret that puts their lives in jeopardy.

Backcountry (IFC Midnight)

Director: Adam MacDonald

Stars: Eric Balfour, Missy Peregrym, Jeff Roop

Of Note: I’ve heard good things about this “based on a true story” horror film since its debut at Toronto, which follows a couple to a secluded Blackfoot Trail who are terrorized by a local (played by Eric Balfour from “Six Feet Under”). This modern take on Deliverance opens in New York and on VOD on Friday and then in L.A. on March 27. 

Zombeavers (Freestyle Releasing)

Director: Jordan Rubin

Stars: John Mayer, Rachel Melvin, Bill Burr, Jake Weary, Lexi Atkins, Cortney Palm, Hutch Dano, Peter Gilroy

Of Note: This horror-comedy that premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival last year is fairly self-explanatory. 

Ghoul (Vega Baby Releasing)

Director: Petr Jákl

Stars: Jennifer Armour, Jeremy Isabella, Paul S. Tracey, Debra Garza

Of Note: This Ukraine-based thriller produced by Rob Cohen and Joe Lynch follows three Americans into the country’s forests investigating the wave of cannibalism that hit the country in 1932 where they experience supernatural encounters with the spirit of a serial killer (and cannibal) named Andrei Chikatilo. It opens in New York and L.A. on Friday. 

The Walking Deceased (ARC Entertainment)

Director: Scott Dow

Stars: Dave Sheridan, Tim Ogletree, Joey Oglesby, Sophia Ali, Troy Ogletree, Andrew Pozza, Dave Sheridan

Of Note: I’m going to take a wild guess that this is a spoof comedy based on the popular AMC zombie show “The Walking Dead” and knowing how bad these comedies have been in recent years (I’m talking to you, Vampires Suck!) then I don’t expect much from this one either.

You can post any comments or questions below, or you can get in touch with the Weekend Warrior on Twitter.

Copyright 2015 Edward Douglas