There are no meaningful wide-release movies coming down the pipeline in the last week of January, with only Lionsgate’s “Miller’s Girl” and other smaller releases to give theaters anything to showcase. Unfortunately, we’ve got more like “I.S.S.” (which opened to just $3 million this past weekend) to look forward to. The next big, blockbuster-level release coming our way is Matthew Vaughn’s “Argylle,” which hails from Apple Studios and boasts a star-studded cast. But its box office prospects are uncertain and it is presently difficult to imagine the original, comedic spy thriller doing summer blockbuster numbers. That is what theaters sorely need right now.
The next remote shot at that will come on February 14 when Sony’s superhero flick “Madame Web” arrives. But, as we’ve seen in recent months, superhero movies are no longer as automatically bankable as they once were. Presently, this one feels more like “Morbius” than it does “Venom.” Unless “Bob Marley: One Love” becomes the next “Bohemian Rhapsody,” or unless “Lisa Frankenstein” becomes the next “M3GAN,” we’re not going to see a surefire hit until March 1 when “Dune: Part Two” hits theaters.
March, admittedly, looks much better with other likely hits such as “Kung Fu Panda 4” and “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire” also on the release schedule. Not to mention “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire,” which recently moved up its release date by a couple of weeks. Even so, the pressure is now on those movies to over-deliver, given how product-starved the first two months of the year have been. It’s an ugly situation that may have ugly consequences.