Box Office - 'The Crow' Flops With $2M Friday as 'Alien Romlus' Soars in China

Audiences were untriggered by 'Blink Twice,' while 'Deadpool & Wolverine' again topped with $5M as 'Coraline' was not a one-weekend wonder.

Moviegoers to The Crow (2024 edition): “Caw! Caw! Bang! Fuck, you’re dead!”

The Crow is as bad as you’d expect in all the ways you’d expect, but also in surprising ways. Like so many IP-specific films that somehow spent over a decade in development hell, this version of The Crow is essentially the exact half-assed remake the producers and rights-holders could have just made right from the start without all the fuss and muss. The Crow not only fails the Amazing Spider-Man test (it’s so identical yet inferior to the 1994 version that no one will ever choose this incarnation), but it’s filled with miscalculations related to over-explanation, needless exposition and a near-total denial (atmosphere, violent action, macabre humor, etc.) of what “fans” came to see. It’s the worst mainstream theatrical movie of the year thus far. That it’s performing so poorly this weekend should be a giant warning sign about the dangers of I.P. for the sake of I.P.

With a $2 million on Friday, we’re looking at an over/under $4.5 million Fri-Sun domestic debut for Lionsgtate’s The Crow. I wrote back in late 2016 that if Hollywood had just decided to rip off The Crow (“murdered person returns from the dead to avenge their own killing” is an oft-used hook), they might have had a “new” trilogy by now. I wrote in 2018 that the small-scale success of small-scale originals like Leigh Whannell’s Upgrade ($16 million global on a $3 million budget) meant that Hollywood didn’t need to remake The Crow. After 16 years of development and false starts, The Crow has arrived with miserable reviews, a B- from CinemaScore and a domestic debut frame essentially tied (sans inflation) with the $4.65 million debut of Upgrade. It’ll gross less this weekend than the second Fri-Sun frame of Laika’s 15th-anniversary release of Coraline.

Now the House that Jigsaw Built is (per usual) only on the hook for domestic distribution, and I’m sure they covered their ass to make sure that, once P.V.O.D. and licensing revenue rolls in that, they’ll be fine. But the goal for these ill-advised reboots isn’t just “We’ll survive.” What is the point, for the industry overall, in spending 16 years and $50 million to produce a loose remake/re-adaptation of The Crow? It was a singular film that was successful for specific reasons (the production design, the Hot Topic sensibilities, the killer 90s soundtrack, Michael Wincott going full-Wincott as the baddie, etc.) beyond just the core hook or even the macabre circumstances related to Brandon Lee being accidentally shot and killed with a dummy bullet while filming the very scene in which his character is murdered onscreen. Simply put, what the hell are we doing here?

In other new release news, I will take some comfort in The Crow opening worse than the two original newbies debuting this weekend. Zoë Kravitz’s directorial debut, co-written by E.T. Feigenbaum, opened courtesy of Amazon MGM Studios (Warner Bros. Discovery is handling overseas distribution) with a halfway decent $2.9 million on Friday. Blink Twice, starring Naomi Ackie, Channing Tatum, Christian Slater, Adria Arjona, Simon Rex and Geena Davis (among others), should earn $7.1 million for the weekend. That isn’t bad in this challenging theatrical ecosystem for a $20 million, R-rated original that had to sell itself without revealing any of its third-act surprises or revelations. It may not leg out (a B- from CinemaScore amid primarily positive reviews), but this is the kind of high-concept original for which Amazon uses theatrical to build awareness and prestige for the streaming afterlife. I’ll count it as a measured win.

I’m unsure if the much-discussed “trigger warning” Amazon MGM offered online (and in the movie theater) was necessary. First, it’s probably too late if you’re already in the theater. Moreover, the film’s M.P.A. explanation (rated R for “strong violent content, sexual assault, drug use and language throughout, and some sexual references.”) arguably gets the job done. No spoilers, but it A) isn’t exactly a “video nasty” in terms of onscreen imagery and B) is very much the sort of film that we talk about when we discuss horror as a cathartic experience. If it was a cynical attempt to piggyback onto some of the more disingenuous or ill-informed It Ends with Us discourse, we should also note that the Colleen Hoover adaptation was rated PG-13 for “domestic violence, sexual content and some strong language.” Again, the information is generally there for those willing to do ten seconds of research.

Sony’s The Forge earned $2.4 million on Friday for a likely $6.5 million opening weekend. That’s fine for a $5 million drama, which, as required by law for all faith-based dramas, earned an A+ from CinemaScore. Still, it’s well below the $11.4 million domestic debut nine years ago for Sony and Affirm’s War Room (on the way to a $74 million global total). That’s less about the film and more about how the marketplace has changed over the last decade. Written by Alex Kendrick and Stephen Kendrick, with Alex directing, this marks the Kendrick brothers’ ninth film as writers and/or directors going back to Flywheel in 2003. Even as recently as 2019, Overcomer (released on this same weekend) could pull $38 million worldwide on a $5 million budget. Still, this War Room spin-off should end up with over/under $20 million domestic, on par with most of this year’s faith-based offerings.