STXfilms' The Upside dominated the box office over the weekend, earning almost $20 million — an extremely healthy result for a film whose release had been delayed for so long it was on the verge of being called “troubled.”
At one stage The Upside would have been conceived as a film worthy of an awards-season push, which would've necessitated a release late last year. However, though audiences are clearly lapping up the story — one about a friendship between a rich quadriplegic (Bryan Cranston) and his no-nonsense caregiver (Kevin Hart) — the schmaltz factor seems to have deemed this unworthy of Oscar® love in the eyes of critics after its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival all the way back in 2017.
The encouraging takeaway is that despite what critics say, audiences aren't entirely done with these kinds of earnest stories on the big screen. It's worth noting that The Upside is a re-make of a French film called The Intouchables, which was a massive box office hit in that country in 2011.
The box office allure of a cute dog also demonstrated its power over the weekend with the somewhat robust (especially in light of the film's bemused critical reception) debut of Sony's A Dog's Way Home, which earned more than $11 million to give it third place, behind the behemoth that is Aquaman.
The Keanu Reeves sci-fi film Replicas also debuted over the weekend, and it tanked big time: The film earned only $2.5 million on more than 2,000 screens, landing in 13th place on the chart.
The success of the John Wick films helped reestablish Reeves as something of a box office force, but the takeaway here is that the films have to be, you know, good for that to apply.
Replicas is one of the worst-reviewed films of Reeves’ career, earning it a place in history alongside other Reeves-led genre turkeys such as Johnny Mnemonic (1995) and 47 Ronin (2013).
Speaking of genre films, the past few weeks have seen Netflix solidify their presence as important players in this space — one almost entirely dominated by brand-driven intellectual property on the big screen.
Bird Box (starring Sandra Bullock) went up on the streaming service two days before Christmas. Although social media reaction clearly indicated that many people saw it, the trade media was skeptical when Netflix claimed a week later that it had been “watched” 45 million times, making it the streaming equivalent of a box-office bonanza.
The skepticism came from the fact that it was Netflix themselves citing these numbers — coupled with how notoriously cagey they usually are with data — and that they declined to define exactly what “watched” means (i.e., whether that includes people who only checked out the first five minutes of the film).
But last week Bird Box's streaming success garnered some degree of independent verification when well-established TV ratings measurer Nielsen reported that 26 million United States users watched the film in its first week.
Whatever the final numbers, it’s clear that viewers are embracing Bird Box, and the takeaway is encouraging as it shows that audiences are still hungry for so-called “elevated” genre films. Bird Box is a classy, end-of-the-world thriller with more on its mind than mere thrills. It’s definitely a more nuanced film than A Quiet Place, to which it is often compared.
Bird Box's screenwriter Eric Heisserer (who adapted the screenplay from Josh Malerman's novel) is fast becoming the go-to guy for elevated genre works that aren’t comic book movies or franchise reboots, considering his last credit was the acclaimed 2016 Amy Adams alien film Arrival (adapted from Ted Chiang’s short story).
Films like Arrival and Bird Box feel increasingly under threat in an era when genre films are almost exclusively centered around properties with which the audience is already familiar, so it’s great news when one does well, even on Netflix.
The service continues to fill in gaps left by major studios on the big screen, something further demonstrated by its willingness to take chances with narrative experiments like the Black Mirror episode “Bandersnatch,” in which viewers could direct the main character to make certain decisions.
Debate still continues over whether “Bandersnatch” actually provides a satisfying narrative overall, but there's no denying the excitement around what it was attempting.