Tenet Nearly Defeated by the 1993 Comedy Hocus Pocus
Say what you will about 2020, but it sure made entertainment news interesting. Case in point: last weekend, the biggest threat to Christopher Nolan’s much-hyped $200 million spy-fi thriller Tenet was Disney’s 1993 Halloween comedy Hocus Pocus. It’s not that there’s anything notable about a children’s film following a trio of hapless cannibalistic witches (played with gusto by Bette Midler, Kathy Najimy, and Sarah Jessica Parker). But there were simply no new movies in cinemas.
Tenet won the weekend box office for a fifth week in a row. The crew at the Box Office Mojo estimated it grossed $2,7 million since Warner Bros. refuses to disclose its exact earnings. Tenet’s worldwide gross currently stands at $307,7 million, meaning that the film is inching towards barely breaking even. No wonder all other studios chose to postpone their upcoming movies!
Disney’s theatrical re-release of Hocus Pocus grossed $1,9 million. The New Mutants lost to a 25 years old movie (And not a very good one at that!), dropping to third place with just a bit over $1 million. Its current overall gross – both domestic and overseas – stands at $42 million. Ordinarily, this would have been considered a disaster, but in a year of the pandemic, this is merely a blip.
In the fourth and the fifth places at the last weekend’s box office are two cheesy B-movie thrillers. Unhinged came in fourth with a bit over $847,000 and a total worldwide gross of $36,5 million. Meanwhile, the political thriller Infidel is in fifth place with $461,000 and a total gross of $3,4 million.
Cobra Kai Renewed For a Fourth Season
AV Club says Netflix will renew Cobra Kai, a series that continues the story from the first three Karate Kid movies. Mind you, Netflix already renewed the show for its third season that is coming out in January. But now, the streaming service just gave Cobra Kai its fourth season as well!
Cobra Kai was created by Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz, and Hayden Schlossberg for YouTube Red, YouTube’s platform featuring original content. However, once that project failed, YouTube offered some of its most successful original shows to other networks and streaming services. Cobra Kai was among them. Netflix bought it this June and recently made it available online.
The show follows former high school rivals Daniel LaRusso (Ralph Macchio) and Johnny Lawrence (William Zabka) as they begin training a new generation of karate kids while dealing with their own past mistakes and mid-life crises. While its quality does suffer a bit in season two, Cobra Kai seems like an excellent fit for Netflix that already collects a lot of money by catering to the nerd tastes of its millennial geek audience.
Bill and Ted Face the Music Does Excellent on PVOD
And let us at least close off this week with some good news. SlashFilm reports that Bill and Ted Face the Music did well on Premium Video on Demand, earning about ten times as much there than in cinemas.
A second sequel to a cult 1989 comedy Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure arrived in movie theaters late in August. Like so many other distributors, United Artists Releasing hoped the pandemic might blow over by then. While they were incorrect, they also correctly decided to release it as PVOD. While Bill and Ted Face the Music earned just $3.3 million in cinemas, it also grossed around $32 million on streaming. Considering the meager returns of far more expensive movies like The New Mutants, that’s quite solid.
Taking place two decades after the first two movies, the film follows now middle-aged Bill and Ted (played once again by Alex Winter and Keanu Reeves) still desperately trying to compose the song that will unite the world. Fortunately, their daughters Billie and Thea (Brigette Lundy-Paine and Samara Weaving) are here to help them.
Bill & Ted Face the Music will be available on digital on October 20, 2020, and Blu-ray and DVD on November 10, 2020.
