‘Sonic The Hedgehog 2’ Nabs Boffo $27 Million Friday But ‘Ambulance’ Crashes

Paramount and Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog 2 raced to a terrific $26.5 million Friday, including $6.2 million in Thursday previews. The Jeff Fowler-directed sequel, starring James Marsden, Ben Schwartz, Jim Carrey, Idris Elba, Tika Sumpter and Colleen O’Shaughnessey, seized the second-biggest opening day of 2022, behind (understandably) The Batman’s $57 million Friday gross. The first Sonic, which shattered records and expectations just a month before Covid effectively ended the 2020 theatrical moviegoing year, earned $19 million on its first Friday toward a $58 million Fri-Sun/$70 million Fri-Mon President’s Day weekend. With decent reviews, an A from Cinemascore, popular IP and a lack of kid-specific flicks since Sing 2 last Christmas, Sonic the Hedgehog 2 should open with a $67-$73 million Fri-Sun opening weekend, shattering the three-day debut record for a video game movie.

Audiences and critics liked the first Sonic the Hedgehog, the IP was a genuine “audiences want to see a movie about this” brand, the film played less like nostalgic fan-bait and more as just a high-quality kids flick, and the casting of Jim Carrey as Dr. Robotnik was a clever bit of multigenerational nostalgia. If you were old enough to be nostalgic for Sonic the Hedgehog’s 1990s games, you also had fond memories of Carrey’s initial run of comic roles (Ace Ventura, The Mask, Dumb and Dumber, Batman Forever and Liar, Liar). This was more of the same, with Tails and Knuckles providing added value elements as a new friend and a new villain along with more game-specific story beats and character turns that still gave the fun human characters (like Natasha Rothwell) their moments to shine.

It’s the second breakout sequel of 2022, the second from Paramount no less following Scream (which partially played on 11 years of post-theatrical critical revisionism for Scream 4) in January. It’s Paramount’s fourth theatrical winner in a row, following Scream, Jackass Forever and The Lost City. They now have my benefit of the doubt for Top Gun: Maverick. This is yet another example, as we’ve seen repeatedly since Paramount’s A Quiet Place part II last Memorial Day weekend, that the films that were likely to be big openers before Covid and still scoring accordingly during Covid. So, if Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore opens noticeably softer than The Crimes of Grindelwald, and when Morbius takes a massive second-weekend drop, the fault lies not in the pandemic, but in the movies themselves.

In sadder (but unsurprising) news, Universal’s Ambulance earned just $3.2 million on its first Friday, including $700,000 in Thursday previews. That positions the R-rated action thriller, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Eiza Gonzalez and directed by Michael Bay, for a mere $8.1 million opening weekend. Even with good reviews, an easy-to-explain high concept, a solid cast and a marquee director, Ambulance will need an overseas miracle to justify its $40 million production budget. As we’ve seen since 2016, audiences who once went to the movies just to see a (non-tentpole) movie are instead staying home with streaming. It was the underperformance of Michael Bay’s 13 Hours (a year after American Sniper) in January of 2016 that frankly first made me realize that something had changed, and the shift has only worsened during Covid.

The only situational explanation, beyond the “audiences only show up for the big franchise and marquee character-specific movies now” issue, is that Ambulance didn’t look very “fun.” It’s A) damn good and B) a little lighter on its feet than you might expect, but the (terrific) trailers understandably made it look like a breathless and empathetically terrifying thrill ride. I’m reminded of Widows, another terrific underperformer whose trailers were so intense that they arguably implied a “bad time at the movies.” If that key fifth ingredient of theatrically viable studio programmers is the promise of “escapism,” well, that’s the difference between Baby Driver and Widows or Girls Trip and Rough Night. Ironically, the only hope for movies of this nature on the theatrical level is if Ambulance becomes incredibly popular on PVOD or Peacock.

A24 expanded Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s relentless multiverse fantasy Everything Everywhere All At Once into 1,250 theaters with halfway decent results. The acclaimed Michelle Yeoh/Ke Huy Quan/Stephanie Hsu/James Hong comedy actioner earned $2.157 million on Friday, setting the stage for a $5.6 million (+419%) weekend and $8 million 17-day cume. The film has been in limited release for the last two frames, better to build buzz and accrue positive “Look at those per-theater averages!” coverage before its nationwide expansion. Its per-theater average this weekend, $4,480, isn’t a mindblower but it favorably compares to The Green Knight ($6.7 million in 2,790 theaters last summer) and points to a possible $20 million-plus total. It’s too early to play Oscar prognosticator, but A24 at least has this buzzy gem in its back pocket for the year.