At a time when the fall box office has hit the skids, Hollywood turns its weary eyes to a fanged, fleshy-headed alien to hopefully bail it out as 20th Century Studios’ Predator: Badlands is eyeing, on the low end, a $60 million global box office start, $25M+ of that coming from the U.S. and Canada.
The pic reps Disney’s second go-round with sci-fi this fall after Tron: Ares ran off the grid with a $134.3M worldwide box office total to date off a $220M production cost. The difference this time around is that there’s hope for more walk-up business from guys under 25 with Predator: Badlands beyond its core older dude fanbase. Typically, Predator movies are rated R, and the PG-13 rating here allows for an expansion of the audience.
What does Badlands have going for it? A filmmaker in Dan Trachtenberg who has already injected a blood transfusion into the long-in-the-tooth 20th Century Fox franchise with the original Hulu movie Prey, which wound up being the streamer’s biggest premiere ever at the time in August 2022. While most Predator movies focus on humans being hunted, in Badlands the tables are turned so that the alien hunter is the prey. Also, reviews following last night’s Hollywood premiere stand at 88% fresh.
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Stateside, advance ticket sales are around that of Ballerina and The Accountant 2 (both $24.5M U.S. openings) but behind Tron: Ares ($33.2M U.S. opening). Arguably, there’s better heat out there right now for Predator: Badlands than there was for Tron: Ares. U.S.-Canada theaters will number 3,700 including all Imax, PLFs and premium formats.
What Predator also has going for it, is that there’s been eight films since its inception in 1987 with the Arnold Schwarzenegger starring title, a franchise that has been consistent in its supply versus the mere three Tron movies made since 1982. However, note that there’s a ceiling when it comes to the stateside openings of Predator movies with the franchise record owned by the 2004 crossover title Alien vs. Predator which debuted to $38.2M. Among the standalones, 2010’s Predators from director Nimród Antal and produced by Robert Rodriguez holds the best domestic opening at $24.7M. Predator: Badlands will hold fan premium format previews on Wednesday followed by Thursday previews starting at 2PM.
Predator: Badlands journeys to all international markets this weekend, beginning Wednesday with such hubs as France, Korea, Netherlands and Indonesia. Thursday adds Australia, Brazil, Germany, Italy and Mexico among the majors. Rounding out the rollout, Friday includes China, India, Japan, Spain and the UK. Offshore projection is $35M-$38M.
The previous title, 2018’s The Predator from Shane Black, opened to $49M in like-for-like foreign markets at today’s rates. However, the current overall marketplace is challenged, and that figure also included $19M from China, a figure which Badlands isn’t expected to hit. The Elle Fanning starring movie led pre-sales in China on Friday, but as of now not on the other days of the weekend.
Excluding China, the 2018 Predator movie did its best business in a mix of Mexico, the UK, Japan, Australia, Brazil and the European majors. That installment finaled at $146M global and $95M from the international box office (today’s rates).
Spreading the word on the new film, Fanning, Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi and Trachtenberg attended a special red-carpet screening event at the BFI Imax Waterloo in London last week, as well as an MCM Comic-con London panel, and in September sat down for a chat at SDCC Malaga.
After Predator: Badlands, there’s a slew of new upscale adult movies in North America, all expected to file in the low single digit millions ($1M-$4M) including financier turned frosh domestic distributor Black Bear with its Sydney Sweeney movie Christy about female boxer Christy Martin (2,000 theaters, 66% fresh with Rotten Tomatoes’ critics), Sony Pictures Classics and Walden Media’s Nuremberg (1,700 theaters, 68% fresh RT), Amazon MGM Studios/Kingdom Story Company’s Sarah’s Oil (no RT critical score yet) and Mubi’s $24M pick-up of Jennifer Lawrence-Robert Pattinson drama Die My Love (1,900 theaters, 79% fresh).