Box office preview: Alex Garland’s ‘Civil War’ will try its best not to divide the moviegoing nation

Edward Douglas
·5 min read
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After a quieter April opening weekend, we get a slightly busier one with one high profile wide release and a handful of smaller releases. Read on for Gold Derby’s box office preview.

The big release of the weekend is “Civil War,” filmmaker Alex Garland‘s fourth feature film as a director, and one that is reportedly A24’s biggest budget production, reportedly costing $50 million. Set in a dystopian war-torn future America, the movie stars Oscar nominee Kirsten Dunst and Cailee Spaeny from “Priscilla” as two wartime journalists heading to D.C. to interview the President (Nick Offerman), who is about to be deposed by a group of opposing rebels. The movie also stars Jesse Plemons, Wagner Moura and Stephen McKinley Henderson.

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Garland established himself as a screenwriter with films like Danny Boyle‘s “28 Days Later” and the 2012 “Dredd” movie starring Karl Urban, but his 2015 directorial debut “Ex Machina” was a breakout hit with A24, grossing $25.4 million in North America, and even winning an Oscar for its visual effects. After that, Garland went over to Paramount for the 2018 sci-fi thriller “Annihilation,” starring Natalie Portman, which did slightly better. And then a few years ago, Garland released the horror movie “Men,” starring Jessie Buckley, which puzzled critics and moviegoers alike, making just $7.6 million in North America.

A24 clearly was undaunted, seeing the potential for a politically tinged science fiction movie in the middle of a Presidential election year. (Note: Having not seen the movie myself, I cannot tell you whether Garland’s movie mirrors any of the political discourse and dissent in the country over the past 10 years or is entirely fictionalized.)

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Like a number of movies released over the past few weeks, “Civil War” premiered at the SXSW Film and TV Festival, and so far it’s received quite strong reviews that are likely to help boost interest to see the movie as soon as possible, although some have called the movie divisive. “Civil War” will also continue A24’s initiative to release movies on IMAX screens, which included recent IMAX re-releases of “Ex Machina” and Ari Aster‘s “Hereditary.” Early word is that the movie will be A24’s widest release ever in roughly 3,800 theaters in North America, including a reported 505 IMAX screens. This is the widest R-rated release for an independent studio EVER.

There will definitely be interest in “Civil War,” possibly from both sides of “the aisle,” and hopefully moviegoer reactions to Garland’s latest won’t lead to an ACTUAL civil war. It probably won’t, but we can probably expect it to win the weekend with more than $20 million, which would make it A24’s highest-grossing weekend ever, as well as the studio’s very first #1 weekend in its 10-year history.

Even though “Civil War” is the most high-profile new release this weekend, there are a few other films that will get some sort of moderate or wider release, though we have no definitive theater counts for any of them.

These include the Dennis Quaid golf drama “The Long Game.” Directed by Julio Quintana, the film takes place in 1955 and tells the story of five Mexican-American caddies who create their own golf course in the Texas desert in order to learn how to play. The movie also stars Jay Hernandez, best known for starring in Eli Roth‘s “Hostel,” and it could appeal to the vast Hispanic audience that regularly goes to theaters, even though a golf movie might be a tough sell. This might still be able to get into the lower part of the Top 10.

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We’re also getting a remake of the 1991 dark comedy “Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead,” starring Oscar nominee June Squibb (“Nebraska”), Nicole Ritchie and Jermaine Fowler from last year’s “The Blackness.” This is another case where not having a theater count makes it difficult to know whether this has any chance at getting into the Top 10.

On top of that, Well Go US Entertainment is releasing the horror film “Sting,” from Australian filmmaker Kiah Roache-Turner, which involves an apartment building that’s plagued by a giant killer spider after a young girl takes an alien creature as a pet, only for it to grow to a deadly scale. Oddly, this movie also stars Fowler, so he’ll be in two genre movies out this weekend, although depending on theater counts, this is likely to do better than the “Babysitter” remake.

The popularity of K-Pop concert films will be tested this weekend, to see if “Suga – August D Tour ‘D Day’ The Movie” (that’s the real title!) might make a mark in the IMAX screens it will grab away from “Civil War.” Korean rapper Suga is another member of BTS, the group that has had a number of Top 10 box office hits with this sort of release, so we’ll see how this fares. Again, not knowing how many theaters it’s getting.

Also, Nicolas Cage stars in Benjamin Brewer‘s “Arcadian” as the father of two teenage sons (Jaeden Martell, Maxwell Jenkins) who are trying to survive in a post-apocalyptic world, and who is forced to leave the safety of their farm when one of his son doesn’t return home before sundown.

Lastly, Bleecker Street will be giving a limited release to David and Nathan Zellner‘s “Sasquatch Sunset,” starring Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keough as members of a family of (what else?) sasquatches — honestly, that’s the plot! I’ll have more to say about this next week when it gets a wider release.

As always, you can look for a wrap-up of the weekend box office sometime on Sunday.

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