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‘Glass’ Wins An Incredibly Weak Weekend Box Office as ‘Serenity’ Bombs

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The good news for M. Night Shyamalan is that Glass finished in first place for the second week in a row, earning an estimated $19 million.  The bad news is that his sequel to Unbreakable dropped 53% since last week, and also came in well under Split’s second weekend.

Shyamalan’s Split opened slightly below Glass last weekend, but whereas Glass is starting to immediately dip, Split only dropped 36% in its second weekend, and will most likely beat Glass‘ overall domestic box office total.  Split was also able to add theaters over the film’s second and third week, capitalizing on “Split-fever” in the winter of 2017.  Glass, even with the weakest competition of the new year so far and two dead-on-arrival new releases, was not able to replicate the success of Shyamalan’s brief comeback. read more

‘Glass’ Proves to Be Breakable at Weekend Box Office

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M. Night Shyamalan’s Glass entered the Martin Luther King weekend with some lofty expectations, as some estimates placed the film’s debut in the $60 to $70 million range.  Unfortunately, that Glass wasn’t shatter-proof, as the latest twist-filled film from Shyamalan generated only $40.5 million over the Thursday to Sunday frame.

Shyamalan (a director with a more than inconsistent track record for both box office and critical successes-anyone remember his adaptation of The Last Air Bender?) faced virtually no new competition over the long weekend, as studios believed the hype and intentionally kept their films away from the sequel to Split and Unbreakable.  The reviews for Glass certainly didn’t help its performance, as the film currently clocks in with a 35% fresh rating (and 24% from top critics) on Rotten Tomatoes. Combine those stats with a lukewarm audience response, with a “B” grade from exit polling company Cinemascore, and you have a recipe for disaster only rivaled by the director’s brief foray into the seedy world of education reform (in 2013, Shyamalan tried to cash in on the trend with his expose entitled I Got Schooled).  Glass should continue to turn a modest profit, as it faces little competition over the next few weeks, but Shyamalan’s performance may serve as a bump in the road for his comeback tour (and no one is asking for sequels to After Earth, The Village, or Lady in the Water). read more

‘Glass’ Trailer Debuts at SDCC… And You Can Watch It Right Now!

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Nothing’s worse than sitting at home somewhere outside of San Diego and reading about all of the wonderful things happening at Comic Con and not being able to see any of it. Lucky for us, M. Night Shyamalan threw us a bone and debuted the brand new trailer for Glass simultaneously at his SDCC panel and online!

Glass is the highly anticipated follow-up to both Unbreakable and Split and it features Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, James McAvoy, and Anya Taylor-Joy all returning to their previous roles. The trailer opens on a new character played by American Horror Story favorite, Sarah Paulson, and the tension builds from there. You can watch the entire new trailer below: read more

‘A Quiet Place’ Makes Some Noise at the Box Office with $50 Million Opening

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When it comes to box office returns for horror films this year, the releases have been relatively “quiet” at the box office, until Paramount’s A Quiet Place was released this weekend.  According to preliminary reports, A Quiet Place will win this weekend’s box office with $50.4 million, making it the second highest opening so far this year, behind only Black Panther.

Unlike last year, which saw Split and Get Out dominate the winter box office frame, no horror film has been able to capture the attention of audiences in a similar fashion.  Although profitable, many of the horror films (most notably Winchester, Strangers: Prey at Night, and Unsane with $25, $24, and $8 million respectively) under performed, with the exception of Insidious: The Last Key surprising everyone with a $67 million dollar take and an additional $100 million overseas.  A Quite Place is poised to do much better however, taking in almost 75% of Insidious’ domestic gross in its first weekend alone. read more

Fox Cancels M. Night Shyamalan’s ‘Wayward Pines’ After 2 Seasons

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Now there’s a twist you didn’t see coming! Executive producer M. Night Shyamalan’s Wayward Pines will not be returning for Season Three. TV Line reports that Fox has pulled the plug on the supernatural drama after mulling the decision over since this past summer.

Fans of the show haven’t particularly been holding their collective breath for more episodes, as Season Two’s finale last aired in late July of 2016- before the January 2017 release of Split– back when Shyamalan was known as a former director of satisfactory thrillers with twist endings and big budget disasters/education reform extraordinaire. Even if Fox wished to continue with the series, Shyamalan may have found it difficult to split his time between the television series and his successful new work on the big screen. Split was a box office surprise and it earned critical praise like Shyamalan hadn’t seen since 2002, and it’s follow-up, Glass, is currently in post-production. read more

Shyamalan Announces Unbreakable Sequel Has Finished Filming

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Following up on his triumphant return to the ranks of the Hollywood directorial elite with the 2017 box office smash Split, M. Night Shyamalan is finally ready to give us the full-length sequel that we’ve waited 17 years for.  According to the director’s official Twitter account, principal photography for Glass, the sequel to 2000’s Unbreakable, just finished wrapping up on Monday, December 4th.  The tweet can be seen below.

Announced in September of this year, Glass will center on Samuel L. Jackson’s character Elijah Price (referred to as “Mr. Glass”) and his involvement in the pursuit of criminal schizophrenic Crumb by David Dunn (Bruce Willis.)  Shyamalan has contended for years that Unbreakable was the first part of an envisioned trilogy, and in a surprise twist (which the director is known for) Willis showed up at the end of Split and revised his role as the hero Dunn. read more

Blumhouse Announces April 2018 Release for ‘Truth or Dare’

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Back in March of this year, it was announced by Blumhouse Productions that a supernatural horror movie called Truth or Dare would be given the green light.  With Lucy Hale (Scream 4) set to star, Truth or Dare would continue to add to its impressive young cast over the next few months to include Aurora Perrineau (Jem and the Holograms) and Tyler Posey (Teen Wolf) among others.  All that was missing was a release date…..until now.  Blumhouse has formerly announced that Truth or Dare will be released in theaters and VOD (presumably) on April 27th, 2018.  Deadline was the first to break the news. read more

2017 is Officially the Highest Grossing Year Ever for Horror Movies

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In January of this year, I wrote that Horror movies are secretly saving Hollywood’s major film studios. Ten months later it turns out that it’s no longer a secret! The New York Times just crunched the numbers and reports that 2017 is “the biggest year in horror history,” citing the runaway success of such hits as Get Out, It, and Split.

As of this Friday, the combined box office earnings of all of the horror films of 2017 sits at $733.5 million. With two months left to sell tickets, that number will undoubtedly climb even higher. The current figure is already $100 million higher than the previous box office champ: the horror movies of 2000. Then, the release of Scream 3, Scary Movie, and What Lies Beneath earned a combined $617.7 million at the multiplex. read more

Anya Taylor-Joy Looking to Sign on for Robert Eggers ‘Nosferatu’ Remake

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Variety is reporting that star of The Witch and Split, Anya Taylor-Joy, will “re-team with director Robert Eggers on his new take on a cinematic classic”, the quintessential vampire film, Nosferatu. 

Eggers directed the young star in his horrifying debut The Witch, and “… wanted to re-team with Taylor-Joy on the film early in the process, but after she became a bona fide movie star in M. Night Shyamalan’s hit Split, the young actress’ schedule has filled up. She is currently filming Josh Boone’s X-Men film New Mutants and is also signed on for the Split and Unbreakable sequel Glass, which also stars James McAvoy, Bruce Willis, and Samuel L. Jackson.” read more

M. Night Shyamalan Announces Sequel to Split and Unbreakable

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M. Night Shyamalan’s career has had more twists than the endings to his movies! He scored bigtime early in his career with hits like The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs before slipping into mediocrity with flops like The Happening, The Last Airbender, and After Earth. He began to win back fans with 2015’s The Visit, but his real second chance came with this January’s Split. Made on a budget of just $9 million, the movie earned nearly $275 million worldwide! While this may not be enough to wash the taste of After Earth‘s $60 million domestic gross against a budget of $130 million, it’s certainly enough to show that Shyamalan can still make likable and financially successful movies when given a small budget. read more