September continues to be surprisingly busy for movies this year. This weekend brings three new nationwide releases, one nationwide expansion, one new notable limited release, and one limited expansion.
Adam Sandler can’t get butts in the seats for his PG-13 comedies anymore. ‘Pixels’ was a major summer tentpole flop. Lucky for the down-and-out (and presumably disappointed) distributor Sony, Sandler’s big release this weekend is an animated family flick, the first to be released in several weeks. Showing on nearly 3,800 screens in North America, ‘Hotel Transylvania 2‘ is the biggest release of the weekend. The first ‘Hotel Transylvania‘ focused on Dracula trying to keep his vampire daughter away from a human love interest. This time around, his daughter is considering leaving the monster safe haven with her new family, so Dracula attempts to become the world’s best grandfather to her son so that she won’t leave.
The second nationwide release comes from Nancy Meyers. ‘The Intern‘ stars a gentle Robert De Niro as a bored and purposeless retired widower who take a “senior internship” with an up-and-coming e-commerce company headed by a workaholic owner and founder (Anne Hathaway). Assigned to work as the owner’s assistant, his old-school mentality and professionalism bring a refreshing new perspective to her difficult job. A meaningful relationship forms between the two as he teaches her to find balance in life and she teaches him about strength and optimism. As expected, ‘The Intern’ aims to pleases older audiences – but don’t be surprised to see younger audiences enjoying it too.
Without a lick of advertising, Eli Roth’s long-shelved horror film ‘The Green Inferno‘ hits more than 1,500 screens this weekend. Written and directed by Roth, the grisly movie follows a group of activist college kids who travel to the Amazon to “make a difference” – but they’re about to come in contact with cannibalistic natives who don’t take kindly to the unwanted visitors. Made on a tiny budget of $6 million, ‘Inferno’ is likely hoping to see the same sort of success as recent micro-budget horror flick ‘The Visit’.
After exclusively showing on IMAX screens for one week, the true story thriller ‘Everest‘ expands to over 3,000 standard 2D and 3D screens.
Roland Emmerich is once again taking a break from grand scale disaster flicks with a small drama. With a little-known leading cast (and a few known supporting actors) and a clichéd character dynamic, ‘Stonewall‘ tells the story of a bewildered young man who gets caught up in something much bigger than himself: the Stonewall Riots of 1969. Much like Emmerich’s 2011 Shakespeare drama ‘Anonymous‘, early word of mouth is not good.
Finally, after a huge weekend (the most successful per-screen debut of 2015) on six screens, Lionsgate’s thrilling war-on-drugs drama ‘Sicario‘ expands to 56 screens leading up to its nationwide expansion next weekend (October 2nd).
