Bullock And Tatum’s ‘Lost City’ Bests ‘Batman’ With $12 Million Friday

Sandra Bullock once again proved that she’s a genuine butts-in-seats movie star, as Paramount’s The Lost City topped the domestic box office on Friday. The well-reviewed (76% and 6.4/10 on Rotten Tomatoes) rom-com adventure, co-starring Channing Tatum (in prime “lover not a fighter” mode) and Daniel Radcliffe (as the scenery-chewing baddie), earned a strong $11.55 million on Friday, including $2.5 million in Thursday previews (and $3.25 million including various pre-release sneaks). That positions Paramount’s over/under $70 million adult-skewing (but kid-safe) studio programmer for a $30.5 million Fri-Sun debut. In pre-streaming times, say around 2014, a Bullock/Tatum rom-com actioner would have been a surefire $40 million debut. In 2022, amid audiences becoming more acclimated to streaming and with Covid concerns keeping older/adult moviegoers out of theaters, a $30.5 million debut qualifies as a near-miracle.

While, as Sandra Bullock’s Prince of Egypt character once sang, hope is frail, it is also (sing it with me now) hard to kill. The original, star+concept release was anointed one of the last great hopes for the commercial viability of the old-school “just a movie” theatrical offering. Assuming it doesn’t collapse tonight (or in the coming weeks), it’s doing its job keeping our spirits high. It had four of the five “required items” for a viable “just a movie” release in pre-Covid times, namely an all-star cast (including Brad Pitt in a much-advertised cameo), an easy elevator pitch (a romance novelist gets kidnapped and her cover model races to the rescue), decent reviews and the promise of cinematic escapism. The Nee brothers aren’t marquee directors, but sometimes close enough is good enough.

Moreover, Bullock has been a consistently bankable movie star for over two decades. Even just from 2009 through 2015, she racked up a slew of big opening weekends (from $33 million for The Proposal to $55 million for Gravity to $115 million for Minions) in a slew of mostly non-franchise and/or non-IP flicks (The Blind Side, The Heat, etc.). Like Leonardo DiCaprio and Denzel Washington, Bullock has mostly stayed out of existing IP (or, as with Ocean’s 8, made sure she was bigger than the brand) and thus continued to be defined by “Sandra Bullock – actress and movie star” as opposed to being linked to a given marquee character. She also tends to vanish from public view when she’s not working, making her on-screen appearances into genuine events amid an “every star is just a tweet away” social media era.

Also, Bullock’s mainstream crowd-pleasers tend to be leggy as hell. Gravity and The Proposal earned five times their respective openings, while Ocean’s 8 earned 3.5x its $40 million debut, The Heat quadrupled its $39 million launch and The Blind Side earned 7.7x a $33 million debut in late 2009. That’s not even counting the Christmas season releases like Miss Congeniality and Two Weeks’ Notice or the “way back when” word-of-mouth monsters like Speed ($121 million from a $14 million debut in 1994) or While You Were Sleeping ($81 million/$9 million in 1995). Moreover, it’s not like the next handful of wide releases (Morbius, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore and Ambulance) are chasing the same demographics. This one could play well into summer and past the $100 million mark.

As noted yesterday, Paramount has been on a mini-roll of late, pulling good-to-great business for Scream ($82 million from a $33 million Fri-Mon debut) and Jackass Forever ($58 million/$22 million). The Lost City is the kind of star-driven high-concept flick that used to be Hollywood’s bread and butter, and it’ll be followed by the at least somewhat anticipated (possibly highly anticipated) Sonic the Hedgehog 2 in two weeks. If they go four for four, I’ll start being optimistic about Top Gun: Maverick this Memorial Day. They should still play nice with Tom Cruise over Mission: Impossible 7’s theatrical window. It’s not remotely worth damaging that key creative/commercial relationship, Nonetheless, I haven’t been this hopeful about Paramount since 2015. Maybe they really can be more than just “the home of Paw Patrol.”