‘Uncharted’ Unearths Boffo $15.4M Friday As ‘Dog’ Earns $5M

In the “before times,” as in before 2016 when the bottom fell out on studio programmers due to competition from streaming and VOD, I would often note how one of the best pieces of marketing a studio could have was a solid, demo-friendly trailer attached to a hit movie. Think, offhand, the Morgan Freeman-narrated Deep Impact teaser attached to Titanic, the cryptic Percy Jackson teaser (essentially a roll call of its stacked ensemble cast) attached to Avatar, or the very funny DMV Zootopia teaser attached to Star Wars: The Force Awakens. I’m not arguing that Sony’s Uncharted trailers were exceptional, but they go the job done. Moreover, the trailers for the Tom Holland/Mark Wahlberg swashbuckling adventure flick played for every single moviegoer who saw Spider-Man: No Way Home in a theater over the last two months.  

Sony’s Uncharted, a long-in-development video game film which on paper seemed like a doomed IP for the sake of IP adaptation, opened with a whopping $15.4 million on Friday night. That includes $3.7 million in Thursday previews. The upswing from Thursday to Friday is higher than most recent President’s Day biggies (Black Panther, Deadpool, Fifty Shades of Grey, etc.). Sonic the Hedgehog earned just $3 million in previews and then a $20 million opening day in February 2020 (for an eventual $58 million/$70 million launch). It had better reviews, a stronger IP and wasn’t dealing with Covid variables. We’re looking at a likely $45 million Fri-Sun/$52 million Fri-Mon debut. That’s easily the biggest opening weekend of 2022 and the fourth straight “big” IP opener for Sony after Venom 2, Ghostbusters: Afterlife and Spider-Man: No Way Home.  

As folks who saw a big film over a Fri-Mon weekend would otherwise have done so on a Fri-Sun weekend, so I’ll argue that its likely over/under $52 million Fri-Mon debut is on par with the $54 million Fri-Sun debut of Detective Pikachu in 2019. It looks like my notions about Uncharted being Tom Holland’s variation on Leonardo DiCaprio’s The Man in the Iron Mask (which was the movie that came closest to topping Leonardo DiCaprio’s Titanic during that film’s 15-weekend reign atop the box office) were correct. Does this mean Holland is a “star?” Doubtful, as it’s not like anyone showed up for Chaos Walking last March. But Uncharted could be akin to Kristen Stewart’s Snow White and the Huntsman, which opened with $55 million in June 2012 amid her Twilight-era popularity.  

Holland may be an added value element in already appealing blockbuster package (think Tom Hardy *as* Venom) and Mark Wahlberg can still be an asset likewise. Moreover, there is no video game movie curse. Just since 2016, we’ve had a slew of solid commercial performers (The Angry Birds Movie, Rampage, Tomb Raider, Detective Pikachu, Sonic the Hedgehog and now Uncharted) based upon video games. Most of them, along with The Angry Birds Movie 2 (which bombed because Angry Birds Movie was mediocre) were varying degrees of “good.” As Hollywood realizes that comic book flicks outside of the Marvel/DC brands don’t fly, video games are going to be the next frontier for theatrically worthy IP. Sony deserves credit for crafting an old-school adventure flick that stood on its own with or without interest in the IP.  

Meanwhile, in almost equally optimistic news, Reid Carolin & Channing Tatum’s Dog opened with $5 million on Friday. The comparatively lower profile dramedy, starring Tatum as an Army Ranger taking a military dog to his owner’s funeral, is frankly exactly the kind of film that has been in commercial peril for the last six years. So that it’s going to earn around $14 million over the Fri-Sun frame and $16.5 million over the President’s Day holiday frame is incredibly encouraging. MGM spent the money advertising this FilmNation Entertainment release, including assuring audiences that the dog does *not* die at the end. Alongside Addams Family 2, No Time to Die, House of Gucci and Licorice Pizza, it’s perhaps time to start taking MGM seriously for the first time since… how old am I again? 

LD Entertainment dropped The Cursed into 1,687 theaters. Horror fans are simply happy that something of its ilk (an original, period-piece werewolf movie) exists in theaters nationwide. The film concerns a pathologist who visits a rural 19th century French town to investigate possibly supernatural murders, so basically Sleepy Hollow played straight. It earned around $590,000 for a likely $1.85 million Fri-Mon debut. Reviews and buzz are decent, and my wife and I are planning to do our part this evening at the local AMC or Regal. Meanwhile, China’s Too Cool to Kill opened domestically in 30 theaters. The remake of a 2008 Japanese action comedy earned around $30,000 on Friday for a likely $98,000 Fri-Mon weekend. It’ll have to make do with its current $281 million cume in China (Battle at Lake Changjin 2 is at $581 million).