Box office preview: ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ and ‘Meg 2’ take big swings against ‘Barbenheimer’

The combination of Greta Gerwig‘s “Barbie” and Christopher Nolan‘s “Oppenheimer” collectively made $139.7 million on their second weekend, so can any new movie best them this time around? Read on for Gold Derby’s box office preview.

First up on Wednesday is Paramount Pictures’ animated “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem,” co-written and produced by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg (“This is the End,” “Sausage Factory”) with Jeff Rowe (“The Mitchells vs. the Machines”). It puts a twist on the previous animated “Turtles” movies by casting young newcomers as the title stars: Nicolas Cantu voices Leonardo, Brady Noon is Raphael, Micah Abbey voices Donatello and Shamon Brown, Jr is Michelangelo. There are many bigger names in the voice cast, too, including Ice Cube, Jackie Chan, John Cena, Rose Byrne, Maya Rudolph, Rose Byrne and Rogen himself.

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The “Turtles” have quite a history from the original comics by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird in the ’80s, to a trilogy of popular live action movies and television cartoons in the ’90s, and then a number of attempts to revive them over the past 20 years. The last animated feature film with the characters was “TMNT” in 2007, which made less than $100 million worldwide, but seven years later, producer Michael Bay had much more luck with “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” released by Paramount this same weekend. It opened with $65.5 million and grossed $485 million worldwide, easily the most successful of the franchise.

Despite the success of the 1990 live action movie, each successive movie made less money, making some think that the “Turtles” were just a fad with limited value, despite those movies having a huge influence on many Millennials in the film biz.

Rowe’s animated film is the best-reviewed movie in “Turtles” history, currently at a whopping 97% on Rotten Tomatoes – none of the previous movies received reviews even close to that. That will help convince older “Turtles” fans to go see the movie, and possibly bring their kids, since this is still rated PG and therefore family-friendly.

There may be a bit of a hurdle with “Turtles” bringing in older teen and even older childless audiences due to it being an animated movie, but any perceived prejudices against animation is likely to be reduced looking at the success of Sony’s “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse,” which has grossed over $379 million domestically and has been the #1 movie of the summer … until “Barbie” passes it sometime this week. “Mutant Mayhem” has a similar street-level ethos as the “Spider-Verse” movies, which should help it.

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Even if many of the biggest fans rush out to see the movie on Wednesday (or the previews starting Tuesday afternoon), there should still be enough business for the weekend to allow “Mutant Mayhem” to open in second place behind “Barbie” with somewhere in the mid-$30 millions.

Opening on Friday and also hoping to bring in some big movie business is Warner Bros’ sequel “Meg 2: The Trench,” once again starring Jason Statham and a number of giant prehistoric sharks. The original “The Meg” movie was released in August 2018 to a decent opening of $45.4 million, eventually making $527.3 million worldwide with a massive bump from China (about $150 million of that global take).

Other than a small role in the summer’s “Fast X” – a movie that didn’t do as well as others in that franchise – Statham’s recent roles have reunited him with Guy Ritchie for 2021’s “Wrath of Man” ($103.9 million global box office) and this year’s “Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre,” which made barely a quarter that amount. Other than “The Meg,” Statham has relied heavily on the “Fast & Furious” franchise to keep his name out there, including 2019’s “Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw” which spun-off his character and that of Dwayne Johnson to make $760.7 million worldwide.

While the “Barbenheimer” phenom might put a damper on the “Meg” sequel, it’s also going to lose a ton of audiences to the “Turtles,” since that has a fairly wide-ranging appeal in terms of ages. There will be no reviews released for “Meg 2” before Thursday, which is rarely a great sign.

If anything is going to tank this weekend, it’s probably going to be this, so expect it to make somewhere in the mid-$20 millions to fight it out with “Oppenheimer” for third place, though the way things have been going, it might even end up in fourth place.

There are other movies being released moderately wide, including “Dreamin’ Wild” from “Love and Honor” director Bill Pohlad, with Casey Affleck and Walton Goggins playing Donnie and Joe Emerson, talented singer/songwriting brothers who literally sell their family farm in order to make a record in the ’70s. Co-starring Zooey Deschanel, Chris Messina, Jack Dylan Grazer and Beau Bridges, it’s unknown into how many movies this will be released by Roadside Attractions, but presumably it will do better in the Pacific Northwest where the story takes place. We’ll have to wait and see if the faith elements of the movie help bring out an audience a la movies like 2018’s “I Can Only Imagine.”

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On top of that, the popular Sundance comedy “Theater Camp” will finally be expanded nationwide by Searchlight Studios into over 600 theaters. It’s already been playing for weeks in the bigger cities where Broadway is popular, and it averaged just $2,144 in 295 theaters just this past weekend. Because of that, it’s likely to not even make a million this weekend, which will make it hard to get into the Top 10.

Sony Pictures Classics is also releasing Randall Park‘s feature directorial debut “Shortcomings,” based on the Adrian Tomine serialized graphic novel, and starring Justin H. Min (“Beef”) as indie filmmaker Ben, who goes on a journey of discovery after his girlfriend (Ally Maki) and his best friend (Sherry Cola from “Joy Ride”) both move to New York City. This, too, premiered at Sundance and recently played Tribeca but didn’t generate quite the amount of buzz as “Theater Camp.”

Check back on Sunday to see how the above movies did, and how Gold Derby user did in the box office prediction game.

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