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The Warner Bros wave at the box office continues this weekend with New Line’s Final Destination: Bloodlines, the first sequel in 14 years in the 25-year-old horror franchise. It is eyeing a series -ecord start between $35 million-$40 million at 3,400 locations.
The global outlook for Bloodlines is $70M, with 74 territories going with the U.S.-Canada debut.
The R-rated Zach Lipovsky- and Adam B. Stein-directed feature is very strong with women under 25 both in unaided awareness and first choice, followed by guys under 25. The best Final Destination opening to date belongs to 2009’s The Final Destination, which posted a $27.4M three-day total. Through five movies, the Final Destination titles have minted north of $666M worldwide.
The first installment in the series was based on a story by Jeffrey Reddick that was intended to be an X-Files episode, but was flipped into a screenplay by Glen Morgan & James Wong and Reddick. The setup entails a group of people who escape death after one of them has a premonition that a tragic catastrophe is about to occur. However, each of them dies by bizarre circumstances. The sixth film centers on a college student with violent nightmares, who returns home to find the one person who can break the cycle and save her family from the horrific fate that inevitably awaits them. Rotten Tomatoes reviews are at 93% certified fresh. Previews start around 3:30 p.m.
Meanwhile, horror doesn’t die entirely with Bloodlines flowing at 3,400 sites, as Warner Bros’ own Sinners is expected to ease another 30% with a fifth weekend of $15.4M. The final outlook for the Michael B. Jordan-starring, Ryan Coogler-directed vampire movie is around $270M stateside.
Disney’s third weekend of MCU’s Thunderbolts* looks to dip another 40% in weekend 3 with around $19M.
Meanwhile, The Weeknd aka Abel Tesfaye has a multiplatform experiment going on with his lead star title from Trey Edward Shults, Hurry Up Tomorrow, set to hit theaters Friday timed to his new sold-out tour “After Hours Til Dawn” kicking off in Glendale, AZ. The movie, which also stars Jenna Ortega, was independently financed by Live Nation to the tune of $15M, and is named after Weeknd’s January album of the same name. The tour is expected to be the highest-grossing in North America this year with $400M.
The movie, however, is only expected to open to mid- to high-single digits. Wednesday fan screenings this week, we hear, generated $1M. Previews start Thursday at 6 p.m. It’s a distribution deal for Lionsgate, so if the movie makes $2M or $20M, the studio ala Megalopolis walks away with a paycheck. That said, Lionsgate jumped at the opportunity to team with The Weeknd and support his vision. The four-time Grammy winner dazzled exhibitors with a mini-concert at CinemaCon to jazz them up for the film, which follows a version of himself, an insomniac musician, who encounters a mysterious stranger. No reviews yet on RT. Not a good outlook: Unaided awareness and first choice are in the very, very low single digits, under that of Ortega’s A24 genre comedy Death of a Unicorn, which didn’t exactly gallop into theaters with a $5.7M opening and final U.S.-Canada take under $13M.