Final Destination Shows New Life With Bloodlines - Weeks 2 & 3

Sorry, not sorry about taking Week 2 off for an update. When Clowns, Planes, and Shadow Force are the only new options at the box-office, there’s a reason why most of them haven’t even grossed $5 million in ten days. While Fight or Flight is kind of a fun B-Movie Bullet Train and Shadow Force just made me giggle every time a character said the phrase “Shadow Force” with a straight face on-screen, it’s a little crazy how these were the films that were actually released in theaters when big-budget movies like Wolfs and The Gorge were dumped as streamers. 

Just feels like it should be flipped with the B-Movies being straight-to-streaming and A-Listers going to theaters… Though maybe that’s how you stay an A-Lister these days is by going to a streamer and avoiding the “box-office bomb” label when you underperform in theaters. Hey, I see what’s happening here!

Finally, Week 3 arrived and the hits were back, baby! Final Destination: Bloodlines had an amazing opening weekend of $51.6 million. That’s already more than the last FD film grossed in its entire run! Great call on whoever made the decision to bring back this franchise… and maybe it points again to something people still enjoy going to movies for: crowd reactions and audience responses and Chicken Jockeys.

Thunderbolts* kept grinding away at the cinema for the past couple weeks. Racking up weekends of $32 million and $17 million, the film now sits with a $155.5 million total. The path to $200 million will be hard for this film with two new mega-contenders coming out this Memorial Day Weekend, but it has a chance to crawl its way there much like Bad Boys: Ride or Die was able to stay on over 1,000 screens for two months after it debuted. 

 

The Top Five If Today Was Labor Day:

#1. Thunderbolts* - $155.5 million

#2. Final Destination: Bloodline - $51.6 million

#3. n/a

#4. n/a

#5. n/a

“Thunderbolts*” Bolts To The Top - Week 1

We went one year without a Marvel movie opening the Summer Blockbuster Pool and what a sad May we had without it in 2024. It started with a mere $27.7 debut for The Fall Guy. Thankfully, the MCU has started cranking films out again (well, opinions may vary on the “thankfully” part), but at least we started with more of a “bang” this year. 

Thunderbolts* kicked off the season with a $74.3 million opening weekend. That’s much higher than last May’s selections of The Fall Guy, Something About Something of the Planet of the Apes, IF, and Quiet Place: Even Quieter. That’s the good news!

The “you’ve been warned” news is that the opening weekends of the last MCU films released in the summer have been Dr. Strange 2’s $187 million, Thor: 4’s $144 million, Gaurdians 3’s $118 million, and Deadpool & Wolvie’s $211 million. The Thunderbolts* debut is more in line with Black Widow’s $80 million start in July 2021 and that finished with $180 million. Is this where we Gulp, Big Gulp, or Double Gulp?

Even this year’s thud Captain America: Brave New World opened with $88 million and found a way to finish with $200 million. Can word of mouth and the replacing of that asterisk to a new title for the film change the box-office momentum of the film? Absolutely! Am I mostly telling myself that because I had this film as #4 on my Top Five list? Absolutely! 

Besides, there’s nothing major being released this weekend, so Thunderbolts* has another week to play before the Memorial Day Massacre begins with Ethan Hunt’s impossible mission to stop Lilo & Stitch. West Chesapeake Valley Thunderbolts, Assemble!

 

The Top Five If Today Was Labor Day:

#1. Thunderbolts* - $74.6 million

#2. n/a

#3. n/a

#4. n/a

#5. n/a

 

*****

Extra Bonus Section

 

As per the Week 1 tradition, here are my esteemed, extremely well thought-out, and certainly terrible 2025 Summer Movie Pool prognostications. 

The Didn’t Make Its: Elio (no clue what it is or how it’ll do), Live-Action Dragon (is it too scary, too good, too the same, idk), and the hardest omission Mission: Impossible (the series is a family fave, yet the last one finished with $170 million and I think that’s not enough for the Top Five this year). BTW, on a scale of “totally got this” vs. “shaking in my boots,” I’m jump scaring myself with each of these picks!  

#1. Jurassic Park: Rebirth - It has all 4th of July Weekend to itself and we all know what it is. Seems like a winner to me and I went with the easy, breezy Cover Girl guesstimate of $375 million (which I may have done the last three summers in a row).      

 

#2. Lilo & Stitch - There’s such a superhero overload this summer, I may have overthought the “What’s going the be THE family film of the summer” question. Maybe this is the next Minecraft Movie hit or maybe it’s the next Snow White. Obviously, I’m hoping a lot of the kids who saw L&S the first time are going to want to bring their kids to see it this time. As Elvis would say, let’s Rock-A-Hula, Baby!      

 

#3. Superman - I went with the single DC film over the two MCU films. Warner Bros. has so much invested in their first new DC reboot, they’ve got to make this one of their biggest movies of the year. Both of the other MCU films are setting up next year’s Return of The Avengers movie, so they have less stakes. Can we believe a man can fly… again?

 

#4. Thunderbolts* - Before I thought about it (first mistake), I would’ve put Fantastic Four above Thunderbolts* as it's a known brand. However, every time I saw a trailer for TB, it looked fun and I wanted to see it more and the inverse was becoming true for the FF to me. It has an extra week to make money before Lilo and Ethen Hunt come to play, so I ultimately put this ahead. I’m going to need all the asterisks I can get for this to work. 

[And, yes, after the first weekend I’m already freaked-out about how I flipped these two at the last second]

#5. The Fantastic Four: First Steps - While it is a known brand, this is our FOURTH FF film in 20 years… and none of them have done amazeballs. If Marvel can’t make it work this time, this truly might just be a relic of the 60’s. I’m hoping they pull it off, but I feel like casual fans will be more in a “wait and see” approach.  

Good luck, everyone!