After three weeks atop domestic box office charts, “The Batman” will face competition from a nearly endangered Hollywood species: movie stars.
At a time when familiar franchises, not big-name talent, have been dictating commercial success, Paramount is banking on the combined wattage of Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum to lure audiences to “The Lost City,” a screwball romantic comedy that opens in theaters this weekend and harkens back to a genre that has mostly fallen out of favor with moviegoers.
Buoyed by strong reviews and A-list actors, including a cameo from Brad Pitt and villainous turn from Daniel Radcliffe, “The Lost City” is expected to earn a promising $20 million in its opening weekend. Those ticket sales would put the film in an extremely close race against “The Batman” for first place.
After “The Batman,” a superhero adventure featuring Robert Pattinson as Gotham’s fiercest defender, collected $36 million last weekend, the movie is looking to add another $18 million to $20 million between Friday and Sunday. To date, “The Batman” has generated $300 million in North America, making the comic book adaptation the second pandemic-era movie to cross that benchmark after “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” Globally, the film has crossed $600 million.
“The Lost City” cost $68 million, a hefty production budget for a romantic comedy. But Bullock and Tatum command robust paydays, and filming on location in the Dominican Republic during COVID-19 did not come cheap. Though the film should benefit from positive word-of-mouth and the promise of Tatum’s bare butt, “The Lost City” faces several challenges, namely the absence of adult audiences, the box office decline of movies that don’t involve superheroes, and the Netflix-ification of romantic comedies.
Still, there are signs older crowds aren’t completely averse to visiting their local multiplex. “Dog,” a road trip buddy comedy starring Tatum, is a recent example of an original movie that beat box office expectations. That film opened last month to $15.1 million and has since generated $61.9 million in North America, which is essentially blockbuster status since it cost only $15 million to make.
Aaron and Adam Nee directed “The Lost City,” an amorous action-adventure that takes place on a remote tropical jungle. The story follows Bullock as Loretta Sage, a middle-aged author who gets kidnapped by an eccentric billionaire (Radcliffe) in the hopes she can discover the ancient lost city’s treasure from her latest story. Film critics have praised the chemistry between Bullock and Tatum, whose Fabian-esque character attempts to come to Loretta’s rescue, though he subverts some tropes about the damsel in distress.
Variety’s chief film critic Peter Debruge described the movie as “a breath of fresh air” — “the kind of breezy two-hour getaway that doesn’t take itself too seriously, delivering screwball banter between Bullock and Tatum.”
Several movies will open in limited release, including A24’s action-adventure-comedy-fantasy-sci-fi mashup “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” Sony Pictures Classic’s steamy romantic drama “Mothering Sunday” and Bleecker Street’s thriller “Infinite Storm.”