‘Evil Dead Rise’ Leads Quartet of Newcomers, but ‘Mario’ Will Still Be Box Office King

A quartet of new films will hit the box office this weekend, with Warner Bros./New Line’s “Evil Dead Rise” leading the pack. But make no mistake: “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” will easily top the charts once again.

Universal and Illumination’s animated movie is setting a high bar for this summer’s blockbusters to clear in order to become the top-grossing movie of 2023. It’s already grossed nearly $700 million worldwide after just two weekends. There’s no sign that this incredible pace will slow anytime between now and the release of “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” on May 5, so the road is clear for “Mario” to earn two more No. 1 weekends and more than $1 billion worldwide.

In its long shadow, “Evil Dead Rise” is looking to draw out fans of the famously macabre horror series with a film that, like “House Party” and “Magic Mike’s Last Dance,” was originally greenlit as a streaming title before being shifted to a theatrical release. “Evil Dead Rise” is projected to do better than either of those movies with an opening weekend of at least $15 million from 3,300-plus theaters, with some trackers projecting an opening of over $20 million.

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By comparison, Fede Alvarez’s 2013 reboot of “Evil Dead” opened to $25.7 million from 3,025 theaters, going on to gross $54.2 million domestically and $97.5 million worldwide.

Whether “Evil Dead Rise” can match that figure will come down to how much the strong early reviews for the film can draw in horror fans against the second weekend of Sony/Screen Gems’ “The Pope’s Exorcist.” At time of writing, “Evil Dead Rise” has a 95% rating from 61 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics promising that the film will have all the over-the-top terror and mutilation that fans of “Evil Dead” expect.

Along with “Pope’s Exorcist,” “Evil Dead Rise” will also face horror competition from A24’s “Beau Is Afraid,” which set the mark for the best per-theater average of the year last weekend with just over $320,000 grossed from four theaters. A24 is screening the film on select Imax screens this week before expanding wide on Friday to approximately 1,200 theaters, with projections currently set at $4 million-5 million.

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Of course, while all three of the aforementioned films are horror titles in the broadest sense, “Beau Is Afraid” is very different, replacing gore and occult monsters with a surreal, slow-burning plot that takes nearly three hours to unfold. It centers around a neurotic middle-aged man and the humiliating and bizarre journey he takes to get to the funeral of his abusive mother.

Neither “Beau” nor “Evil Dead Rise” is a major play for general audiences, but both are looking to draw on cult fanbases for turnout, be they longtime “Evil Dead” fans or admirers of “Beau” director Ari Aster, whose two previous films “Hereditary” and “Midsommar” have become cult classics. “Evil Dead Rise” will post a higher number with the larger theater count, but we will see how the unique terror of “Beau” will do against such competition.

Also opening this weekend is MGM/STXfilms’ “The Covenant,” a new thriller from Guy Ritchie starring Jake Gyllenhaal as an Army sergeant who returns to Afghanistan to rescue the interpreter that saved him from the Taliban. The film is projected for an opening weekend of $6 million from 2,611 theaters and currently has a 79% Rotten Tomatoes score.

Finally, Searchlight Pictures will release the TIFF period biopic “Chevalier,” which stars Kelvin Harrison Jr. as Joseph Bologne, a French-Caribbean violinist and composer who rose to become a favorite artist in Versailles as the Chevalier de Saint-Georges, only to find his musical aspirations cut short by the racism of 18th century France. Independent projections are not yet available for the film, which will be released in 1,300 theaters.

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