Those early projections for Edgar Wright’s “The Running Man” seem to be accurate. The soft remake of the 1987 Arnold Schwarzenegger movie, based on Stephen King’s novel, earned $1.9M in Thursday previews, which means it might debut below the $20M threshold this weekend. It’ll fall somewhere in the $17–$19M range.
With a reported budget of $110M, weak reviews certainly didn’t help this film — it currently stands at 64% on Rotten Tomatoes and 56 on Metacritic. It’ll be interesting to see how well the audience scores match up. Enthusiasm seems to be fairly low for Wright’s remake.
The marketing has been a tad off for this film. It also doesn’t help that it’s rated R. Regardless, it’s come to the point where “Now You See Me, Now You Don’t” is projected to beat “The Running Man” this weekend, as it amassed $2.1M in Thursday previews — and that’s despite its reviews being just as mediocre (59% RT, 57 MC).
Who knows, maybe “Predator: Badlands,” which had a $40M opening last weekend, will have a below-50% drop and claim the top of the box office for the second weekend in a row. Word of mouth has actually been very good for that one, and this could lead to more curiosity-driven ticket buyers from Friday to Sunday. Stay tuned.