Even with Oscar winner Charlize Theron and a strong cast– Jessica Chastain, Emily Blunt, a Hemsworth– “The Huntsman” is pretty much DOA. The high number prediction after Friday night is $20 million. It’s already made $43 million abroad and that number looked fairly finite. With a $115 million budget, “Winter’s War” (the subtitle) really needed someone to play Snow White again. This fairy tale is over.
The box office is rather dreary this weekend. “Criminal” is also a bust. Tom Hanks in “A Hologram for the King” opened to apathy with less than $1 million for the weekend in limited release. The other limited releases– “Elvis and Nixon,” and “Sing Street”– better reviewed, not much action. (I wish “Sing Street” would magically take off.)
Basically, everyone’s waiting for HBO to give us two big headlines. Tonight it’s Beyonce’s Lemonade stand at 9pm. Is this an album? A teaser for her tour? No one seems to know exactly. Plus, her team didn’t deliver the finished special until the last minute.
Then Sunday it’s all about Jon Snow on “Game of Thrones.” Is he alive? (Somehow, yeah.) Kit Harington– did he join Dan Stevens and Jessica Brown Findlay in the Oh-my-god-what-have-I-done department? (Hope not.) My guess is we’ll need a plow for all the Snow coming our way. Monday’s NY Post headline– “Snow Job.”