Box office preview: Horror-comedy ‘Lisa Frankenstein’ takes on the Super Bowl (Taylor’s Version)

It’s Super Bowl weekend with the San Francisco 49ers taking on the Kansas City Chiefs, with many tuning in just to see if Taylor Swift can make it to Las Vegas from her Saturday night concert in Tokyo. Plus, there’s exactly one new wide release. Read on for Gold Derby’s box office preview.

It’s been a number of years since we’ve heard from Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody of “Juno” fame, but she’s written the new horror-comedy “Lisa Frankenstein,” which stars Kathryn Newton (“Big Little Lies”) as Lisa, a young woman who falls in love with a corpse, played by Cole Sprouse (“Riverdale”), and decides to try to bring him back to life. Directed by Zelda Williams – the daughter of the late, great Robin Williams – the movie is fully targeted toward the younger female audiences that have made musicals like “Wonka” and “Mean Girls” decent-sized box office hits, including its PG-13 rating.

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Although vampires are pretty standard film fare, live action Frankenstein movies have been somewhat rarer. In 2014, Aaron Eckhart starred in “I, Frankenstein,” which opened with $8.6 million but grossed less than $20 million domestic. A year later, James McAvoy and Daniel Radcliffe starred in “Victor Frankenstein,” but that bombed with just $5.8 million domestic. And yet, Frankenstein continues to work as a name-brand with Guillermo del Toro even working on his own take on the movie monster.

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A bigger factor this weekend might be how Super Bowl weekend has regularly been used to release young adult offerings that might appeal to younger women who normally wouldn’t be interested in the biggest football game of the year. This year is a little different because a certain pop superstar named Taylor Swift is expecting to attend, and considering how Swift had her own massive theatrical hit with “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” last autumn, what to do on Sunday night might be an even tougher decision for the younger women with any interest in “Lisa Frankenstein.”

Some of the bigger hits over Super Bowl weekend have been the concert movie, “Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds,” which opened with $31.1 million in 2008, and two years later, the Nicholas Sparks romance “Dear John” opened with $30.5 million. There have also been a ton of genre releases on the weekend, including “When a Stranger Calls” in 2006, opening with $21.7 million; “The Messengers,” starring Kristen Stewart, in 2007, which opened with $14.7 million; the zombie romance “Warm Bodies” in 2013, opening with $20.3 million; and then, “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies” in 2016 with just $5.3 million opening. In other words, Super Bowl openings have been all over the map, although in the last few years, both “Magic Mike’s Last Dance” and Jennifer Lopez‘s “Marry Me” opened with around $8 million, which is probably right around where “Lisa Frankenstein” is likely to end up, maybe with slightly more if word-of-mouth from sneak previews help its opening weekend.

It could end up being a close race between “Lisa Frankenstein” and “Argylle” for the top spot this weekend, though we’ll give a slight advantage to the former, merely due to the “meh” reaction to Matthew Vaughn‘s action-comedy. The rest of the Top 5 may be a bit of a mess with four movies in the $3 to $3.5 million range, and we’ll have to see how many are affected adversely by the Super Bowl on Sunday.

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On top of that, Disney is giving Pixar Animation’s “Turning Red” a nationwide re-release into theaters after many years playing on its Disney+ streamer. Considering that Pixar’s Oscar-winning “Soul” ended up just making $431k in 1,350 theaters a few weeks back, it’s hard to imagine “Turning Red” might do much better.

IFC Films will release the French Oscar selection, “The Taste of Things,” starring Juliette Binoche, into select cities on Friday, most notably New York and L.A., while Bleecker Street will release the Stone Age horror film, “Out of Darkness,” in limited release.

UPDATE: Shortly after this week’s preview went live, Bleecker Street reported that “Out of Darkness” would actually be released nationwide into 897 theaters, although that doesn’t necessarily mean it will get into the top five or even the top 10.

Make sure to check back on Sunday to see how the new movie does against the returning ones, and don’t forget to play this week’s box office prediction game and place your Super Bets wisely!

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