Box office preview: ‘The Last Voyage of the Demeter’ and ‘Jules’ will battle against ‘Barbenheimer’

Edward Douglas
·5 min read
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There are two new wide or semi-wide releases this weekend, “The Last Voyage of the Demeter” and “Jules,” but how many moviegoers will actually buy tickets with so many other stronger contenders still in theaters? Read on for Gold Derby’s box office preview.

Before we get to the new movies this week, we probably should address the “Barbenheimer” in the room. There’s very little doubt that “Barbie” can pull off a rare fourth weekend at #1 with upwards of $32 million or more after holding up so well against “Meg 2” and the “Ninja Turtles” this past weekend. Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” also has a good chance at reclaiming second place, since it’s likely to have a smaller drop-off this weekend than both of last week’s new movies.

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“Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” was just two million behind “Meg 2: The Trench” over the weekend but received much better reviews and a higher CinemaScore, so we can probably expect it to hold up better and take third place, leaving fourth place for “Meg 2.”

That brings us to the first of the new wide releases, and that is Universal Pictures’ “The Last Voyage of the Demeter,” directed by André Øvredal (“Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark”). It’s based on the section of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula” where the vampire travels by ship from Romania to England to continue his reign of terror. In this case, Dracula (or “Nosferatu,” going by the 1922 silent classic starring Max Schreck) is played by creature performer and actor Javier Botet.

The crew of the Demeter – that’s the name of the ship – includes Corey Hawkins from “Straight Outta Compton” as a British doctor hoping to get a trip back home, while the captain is played by veteran actor Liam Cunningham (“Game of Thrones”) and his young son is played by Woody Norman (“C’mon C’mon”). Other known names and/or faces include David Dastmalchian (“Ant-Man,” “The Boogeyman”) as the ship’s first mate and Irish-Italian actress Aisling Franciosi (also “GoT”) as a stowaway.

While the movie definitely has the Dracula thing going for it and being dark horror by a fairly well-respected genre filmmaker like Øvredal, it’s also a period gothic horror film, which tend to be a tougher sell to American audiences. Case in point: 2012’s “The Woman in Black,” starring Daniel Radcliffe, opened shortly after the end of his “Harry Potter” run with $20.9 million in early February; its 2015 sequel sans Radcliffe earned roughly half the original film’s domestic take. The 2018 gothic horror film “Winchester” (also from the now defunct CBS Films) opened on the same weekend as “Woman in Black” with just $9.3 million and grossed less than $46 million worldwide.

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Earlier this year, the Dracula horror-comedy spin-off “Renfield,” starring Nicholas Hoult and Nicolas Cage as Dracula, bombed quite badly, opening with just $8 million, so it’s odd for Universal to be releasing another Dracula spin-off (essentially) so soon.

There’s a good chance that a movie like “Demeter” can do well in European and other international countries, but Universal is only opening the movie in roughly 2,600 North American theaters, maybe realizing it would be a tougher sell. Reviews (which won’t hit until Thursday) probably won’t be so kind for various reasons I won’t break embargo to share, but those things alone might keep “The Last Voyage of the Demeter” from opening over $10 million. Because of that, it’s likely to open in fifth place behind last week’s rejiggered top four.

Filmmaker Marc Turtletaub, who received an Oscar nomination for producing “Little Miss Sunshine,” directs “Jules,” a smaller indie comedy starring Sir Ben Kingsley as a small-town Pennsylvania resident who encounters an alien after his craft crash lands in his garden. Bleecker Street Films will be releasing the movie moderately wide on Friday, also in an attempt to try to grab older adult business away from “Oppenheimer” mostly.

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Turtletaub previously directed the Sundance drama “Puzzle,” starring Kelly McDonald and late Bollywood great Irrfan Khan, but that movie didn’t even make $2.3 million worldwide, which is not a good sign that the producer of so many huge hits picks the best material to direct. (Turtletaub previously wrote “Gods Behaving Badly” and two short films, but he didn’t write either of his most recent features.)

Although Kingsley probably has a decent draw with older audiences, as does his co-star, Jane Curtin, a veteran from the early days of “Saturday Night Live,” there’s no theater count reported for “Jules,” as of this writing. Without having a presence in more than 1,000 theaters, there’s no guarantee this can even get into the Top 10, making something closer to the $2 million opening for the Bleecker Street release “Mafia Mamma” earlier this year, but probably less.

Also, Cohen Media Group will give a platform release to Juliet Binoche’s latest film “Between Two Worlds,” directed by Emmanuel Carrère. Check back on Sunday to see if the new movies fare better against the late summer blockbusters.

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