Long Range Forecast: ‘Sully,’ ‘Before I Wake,’ ‘When the Bough Breaks,’ & ‘The Wild Life’

Four new releases debut the weekend of September 9. Warner Bros. aims for Oscar buzz with the biopic Sully, Relativity Media tries to scare up a big opening with their horror release Before I Wake, Sony goes the thriller route with When the Bough Breaks, and Lionsgate goes crazy with the animated The Wild Life.

Sully (Warner Bros.)

PROS:

• Tom Hanks stars as the titular Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, who achieved fame in January 2009 after piloting an aircraft that made an emergency landing in the Hudson River with no casualties. The story made Sullenberger a household name, which could create more widespread audience interest.
• With Tom Hanks in the lead and Clint Eastwood directing, Oscar buzz could be strong if reviews are good. Hanks has starred in several Oscar-nominated films in the past few years including Bridge of Spies, Captain Phillips, and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, while Eastwood’s previous directorial effort American Sniper not only received a Best Picture nomination but earned $350 million.

CONS:

• Films about the lives of famous people don’t always do well at the box office. Just in the past year or two, neither Steve Jobs, Truth about Dan Rather, nor Selma about Martin Luther King, Jr. didn’t make much money.

Before I Wake (Relativity Media)

PROS:

• Horror films have been doing well at the box office this year, with The Conjuring 2 and The Purge: Election Year. This movie could continue the streak.
• This is the first film featuring Jacob Tremblay since his breakout role last year as the young boy in Room.

CONS:

• The film was originally scheduled to be released a year and a half before, back in May 2015, but was pulled from the release schedule after Relativity Media’s bankruptcy, then ultimately re-added, only to be delayed again. In fact, the trailer was released on March 13, 2015. Not a great sign, perhaps indicating a lack of confidence in the movie on the distributor’s part.
• With fellow horror release Don’t Breathe being released only two weeks prior, an unusually short window between horror releases, Before couldn’t be hurt if Breathe is an unexpected breakout.

When the Bough Breaks (Sony)

PROS:

• The thriller is about a surrogate mother who develops a psychotic obsession with the man whose baby she’s carrying. Some similar films of “dangerous love” such as Fatal Attraction have previously been hits at the box office.
• The largely African-American cast starring Morris Chestnut was a similar formula to Chestnut’s surprise hit The Perfect Guy last year, which did better than almost anybody expected with a $25.8 million opening weekend and $57.0 million cumulative gross. That was also a September release.

CONS:

• The film is not a remake of the 1994 movie of the same name, which might cause confusion among fans of the original.
• Talk online about the film has been quiet so far, with few trailer views and little buzz on social media.

The Wild Life (Lionsgate)

PROS:

• The animated film tells the legendary story of island castaway Robinson Crusoe from the perspective of the other animals on the island. The clever premise could appeal to children with the talking animals and also adults who may be more familiar with the original Crusoe story.

CONS:

• The trailer only has about 200 thousand YouTube views as of this writing, which is incredibly low for any film but especially an animated one.
• Animated films don’t always do well at the box office, even in wide release. Ratchet and Clank opened with $4.8 million in April, Norm of the North with $6.8 million in January, and Shaun the Sheep with $4.0 million last August.

Check out our complete long range forecast in the table below.