‘Wrath of Man’ opened exactly like a normal Jason Statham action movie, which is encouraging news for this summer’s upcoming theatrical releases.
Wrath of Man opened exactly like a normal Jason Statham action movie, which is encouraging news for this summer’s upcoming theatrical releases. As summer officially begins for movie theaters and movie studios, the key word is “normalcy.” No one is expecting overall grosses close to 2018 and 2019, both of which flirted with $5 billion domestic if you count the “last weekend in April” releases of Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. After all, many of the presumed titans of summer 2020 ( Tenet, Wonder Woman 1984, Soul, Top Gun: Maverick, Minions: The Rise of Gru) have either already debuted or been further kicked down the road while many presumed summer 2021 biggies ( Doctor Strange In the Multiverse of Madness Spider-Man: No Way Home, The Batman, Jurassic World: Dominion, Mission: Impossible 7, etc.) will now open later this year or next year. But of the movies big ( F9, Black Widow) and small ( A Quiet Place part II, The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It) left to fight the good fight, the hope is that many of these films will earn about as much this summer in theaters as they might have under normal circumstances. That’s highly speculative. Godzilla Vs. Kong earned about as much as it would have “normally” in domestic theaters ($93 million-and-almost-done) while Mortal Kombat will likely earn less overall (around $45 million) than it might have on its planned January 15, 2021 opening weekend. And now we have Jason Statham’s Wrath of Man, which kicked off the summer with a chart-topping $8.1 million debut weekend. That is the smallest “summer kick-off movie” since, the Richard Pryor/Gene Wilder comedy See No Evil, Hear No Evil ($7.
