Expend4bles is looking to end the action franchise on a high note at the UK-Ireland box office this weekend, opening in 577 cinemas through Lionsgate.
Billed as the final film entry in the series, Expend4bles sees the titular team of mercenaries tasked with preventing a Third World War. Jason Statham, Sylvester Stallone, Dolph Lundgren and Randy Couture all reprise their roles, with Curtis ’50 Cent’ Jackson, Megan Fox, Tony Jaa, Iko Uwais, Jacob Scipio, Levy Tran and Andy Garcia all joining the cast.
Expend4bles resurrects the franchise after a nine-year hiatus since 2014’s The Expendables 3. That title continued the decline in grosses since the first film: The Expendables opened to £3.9m and ended on £10.6m in 2010; The Expendables 2 started with £2m and finished on £6.3m; while The Expendables 3 started with £1.7m and closed on £3.9m.
Despite lukewarm reviews, the hope for Lionsgate will be that the break has refreshed audience enthusiasm for the 80s action stars. A TV series is reportedly in the works from the franchise, according to Jeffrey Greenstein, president of production company Millennium Media.
Scott Waugh, a stuntman on titles including The Last Of The Mohicans and Bruce Almighty, makes his Expendables series debut as director. His previous features as director include 2014’s Need For Speed, which took £4.9m in the UK and Ireland.
Black Bear Pictures, the US production and distribution firm which has branched out into UK-Ireland distribution in the last year, has its widest release to date with Craig Gillespie’s Dumb Money opening in 561 cinemas.
The film is adapted by Lauren Schuker Blum and Rebecca Angelo from The Antisocial Network, a 2021 book by Ben Mezrich, who wrote The Accidental Billionaires – the source for David Fincher’s 2010 film The Social Network.
Dumb Money chronicles the short squeeze of video game retailer GameStop stock in January 2021, which caused the company’s share price to rocket to the detriment of multiple hedge funds. Paul Dano, Pete Davidson, Vincent D’Onofrio, America Ferrara, Nick Offerman, Anthony Ramos, Sebastian Stan, Shailene Woodley, Seth Rogen and Dane DeHaan are among a stacked cast; the film premiered as a Gala Presentation at Toronto International Film Festival earlier this month.
It is the eighth feature film for Australian-American filmmaker Gillespie, who previously made Oscar-nominated 2017 drama I, Tonya starring Margot Robbie; and made the move to blockbusters in 2021 with Disney’s Cruella (opened: £1.5m; closed: £9.5m).
Black Bear’s upcoming titles in the UK and Ireland include Michael Mann’s Venice Competition entry Ferrari, on December 26.
Lesson learned
Universal is opening The Lesson, a thriller from UK filmmaker Alice Troughton, in 208 cinemas. Starring Richard E. Grant, Julie Delpy and Screen Stars of Tomorrow Daryl McCormack and Stephen McMillan, the film sees a young author take a tutoring position at the estate of a legendary writer. It debuted at Tribeca Film Festival in June this year.
With Charlotte Regan’s Scrapper still in cinemas and now past the £500,000 mark, Picturehouse Entertainment is opening another film: Cannes 2022 Competition title R.M.N. from Romanian director Cristian Mungiu, in 32 cinemas.
A drama set in a multi-ethnic Transylvanian village, it is a seventh feature for arthouse darling Mungiu, whose record gross in the UK and Ireland remains 2007 Palme d’Or winner 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days with £300,987.
Signature Entertainment is opening Kim Burdon’s family animation The Canterville Ghost, in which a US family moves into a stately countryside mansion in the UK that has been haunted by a ghost for 300 years. Freddie Highmore, Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry, Toby Jones, Miranda Hart, Imelda Staunton, Meera Syal and David Harewood lead a voice cast of UK luminaries.
Elysian Film Group is opening Prasanna Puwanarajah’s UK-Irish comedy-drama Ballywalter starring Patrick Kielty.
Three documentaries are starting their rollouts this weekend. Anti-Worlds Releasing has select Q&A and special screenings starting this weekend for A Year In A Field, in which Bafta-winning documentarian Christopher Morris filmed a field near his home in Cornwall each day for a year.
Dogwoof is opening music documentary Angelheaded Hipster: The Songs of Marc Bolan & T. Rex; while Cosmic Cat Films is starting Will Anderson and Ainslie Henderson’s A Cat Called Dom, in which audiences witness how Anderson deals with the grief of his mother’s cancer. The film won the Powell & Pressburger award for best film at last year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival.
Further non-English language releases this weekend include Bollywood comedy The Great Indian Family in 21 cinemas through Yash Raj Films; and Chinese fantasy epic Creation Of The Gods I: Kingdom Of Storms through Trinity Film.
Re-releases this weekend include a remaster of Jonathan Demme’s seminal 1984 Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense in 30 iMax sites through A24; and Clive Barker’s 1987 horror Hellraiser through Arrow Films.
Warner Bros is distributing Pedro Almodovar’s Cannes 2023 short film Strange Way Of Life in 190 cinemas, while also expanding Barbie – currently the sixth-highest-grossing film of all time – to 47 iMax venues.
Netflix, which does not share location numbers, is opening Toronto 2023 title Reptile starring Benicio Del Toro, Justin Timberlake and Alicia Silverstone.
In event cinema, Trafalgar Releasing has Carlos: The Santana Journey Global Premiere in 65 venues on Saturday, September 23.
As well as the Barbie expansion, holdovers include last weekend’s number one A Haunting In Venice for Disney, plus Warner Bros’ The Nun II; and Universal’s Oppenheimer, which should become a record high-grosser in the UK and Ireland for director Christopher Nolan this weekend.
No comments yet