Knock on Wood

Welcome to Week 3 of the Knock on Wood Movie Fantasy League dispatch. Every week (more or less), we’ll bring you a recap of the past weekend’s box office, alongside an overview of the new release films and an updated leaderboard, complete with full teams and points!

This weekend, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie continued its rampage across North American theaters, remaining at Number One, though its lead is not quite what it used to be. It netted an additional $35 million domestically this week, bumping its total gross up to $355 million, though it is trailed pretty closely by Project Hail Mary which, despite grossing significantly less in the long run, continues to perform extraordinarily well in its fifth week. The Drama and You, Me & Tuscany are each down one spot, but still remain in the top five, while A Great Awakening has officially dropped out of the top ten.

The highest-profile new release of the week is Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, a movie with (the casual viewer might be surprised to hear) no connection to the classic Universal monster franchise of the same name, but still does its best to capitalize on brand recognition as it creeps into over 3300 theaters across the country. Truthfully, Cronin’s film owes much more to The Exorcist and The Conjuring when it comes to both style and narrative, which makes sense; it’s produced by Blumhouse, which has made its name from horror films of a similar ilk. It grossed over $13 million this weekend, a more modest opening for the wildly gross and spine-chilling addition to the monster movie canon. We’re not a big fan of purse-clutching here at Knock on Wood, but the film seems to be a solid enough hit both domestically and internationally to more than recoup its $22 million budget. That is what Blumhouse is good at – producing films, both horror and otherwise, at such a low budget that profit is virtually guaranteed. They have the audience and built-in marketing machine for it, so why not?

I was lucky enough to attend the world premiere at the Hollywood Legion Theater a week before its initial release, and the energy in the room was phenomenal. I had a similar experience to watching Cronin’s previous film, Evil Dead Rise; I came away very impressed with his filmmaking chops, and seeing as he knows how to stage the horror just right to elicit maximum cringe (in a good way), I was more than willing to forgive and forget the more achingly familiar aspects of his work. Just as Rise had a stellar creature performance from Alyssa Sutherland at its core, so too does The Mummy in Natalie Grace as Katie, a teenager who mysteriously resurfaces in an Egyptian sarcophagus after her disappearance eight years earlier. There’s a certain emotional disconnect that makes the more intense moments between Katie and her family harder to buy into, even if it’s kept afloat by the sheer disgusting scares and horror action the movie has to offer. In the end, that’s more than enough for me, but whether it will continue to be the sort of hit Blumhouse needs remains to be seen.

Also new this week is David Lowery’s Mother Mary, a psychosexual fever dream starring Anne Hathaway as a pop star who reconnects with her former costume designer (played by Michaela Coel, who is also currently featured in Soderbergh’s The Christophers) after a nervous breakdown. It’s a hard movie to describe, but Lowery (who also directed A Ghost Story and The Green Knight) will always have my number, and I’ll be first in line for anything he creates for the foreseeable future. Mother Mary is only in five theaters this weekend, so it hasn’t garnered any box office points yet, but with a $33,612 average between those five (by far the highest of the entire weekend), it might end up being a bit of a surprise when it swoops into theaters nationwide this coming Friday.

The third new release this weekend is Normal, an action picture starring Bob Odenkirk as a small-town sheriff who becomes embroiled in a dangerous conspiracy. I have not seen it yet, but it seems to have some elements of Nobody and John Wick (fitting, since both were written by the screenwriter of Normal, and Odenkirk even starred in both Nobody films). It debuted at Number Seven in the domestic box office, netting over $2.5 million. Not a bad showing.

Even with the addition of critical scores for last week’s new releases, Mermaid and The Yeti remain at zero points, while You, Me & Tuscany got quite a bump from its Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes scores, and both Faces of Death and The Christophers received a windfall of critical points. Who knows, maybe one of these films will make or break a winner just a few short months from now…

Also notable this week in the Rowan canon is the documentary Lorne, from director Morgan Neville (20 Feet from Stardom, Won’t You Be My Neighbor?), which seeks to dive deep into the psyche of SNL creator Lorne Michaels. It largely interrogates Michaels’ purposely unknowable nature and chronicles the tumultuous process behind both SNL’s history and the chaotic way the show is produced every week. For those who watch SNL every week, and for whom the show holds a special place in their hearts, the doc is perfect. It’s also funny as hell!

I would be remiss if I did not also mention the re-release of Werner Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams in select IMAX 3D theaters. It’s the apex of Herzog’s fascination with the human condition, in which he reckons with the past, quite literally, colliding with the present through the oldest surviving art created by human hands. Herzog uses his imagination to widen that cultural lens, and invites his audience to do the same. I snagged tickets to a special screening at the AMC CityWalk, which featured a live Q&A with Herzog himself, and simply being in the same room as the man was a spiritual experience. His unique sensibility, distinctive accent, and oddball humor made him a perfect subject for a long-form conversation about his life and work. It felt like a truly unique thing to witness.

We are still working on displaying the Leaderboard on this page, but you can always find it here. The two-way tie at the top (owing entirely to picking both Super Mario and The Drama) remains, but there is far more point diversity across the board. Soon enough, the gap will begin to close.

Remember, for the most up-to-date scoring on each movie, check out this spreadsheet. Additionally, I’ve made a Letterboxd list of every film chosen by our players for the League. You can view that here.

Finally, some good news out of CinemaCon for those who picked Forgotten Island: DreamWorks screened their latest animated film for theater operators and press at the annual trade show in Las Vegas, and initial reactions are very positive! The HoloFiles calls it “a beautiful, touching film about the enduring power of friendship and how memories make us who we are,” and Taylor Gonzales applauds it as “a triumph for original storytelling.” Scott Menzel says “Count on this being in the Academy’s Best Animated Feature conversation next year.” Forgotten Island doesn’t hit theaters until September 25 (the last week eligible for the draft), but now we can be assured it’s something to look forward to!

Next week, Mother Mary goes nationwide, but Michael, Antoine Fuqua’s King of Pop biopic, is almost certain to wipe out all competition. Whether or not it can compete with another potential Mario surge remains to be seen! Also debuting is Jorma Taccone’s pitch-black comedy Over Your Dead Body, Rupert Wyatt’s historical action epic Desert Warrior, and Omaha, a tender family drama (in certain NYC theaters only).

As a reminder, submissions for the MFL close at the end of April, so there is about a week and a half left! Please let us know if you have any feedback, and don’t forget to come back here next week for a recap and the updated leaderboard!