After notching what I hear is the best test scores in MGM history, Ron Howard’s Thai cave rescue movie Thirteen Lives is moving its release date from Easter weekend this year to Friday, November 18 and into the aorta of awards season.
The movie, scripted by two-time Oscar-nominated screenwriter William Nicholson, is the type of movie that needs a lot of buzz, and I hear the studio will be screening it plenty come the fall.
Thirteen Lives earned a 97 in the top two boxes and an 86 definite recommend. MGM and UAR showed off footage from Thirteen Lives at CinemaCon last August.
Thirteen Lives‘ logline: A rescue mission is assembled in Thailand where a group of young boys and their soccer coach are trapped in a system of underground caves that are flooding.
Viggo Mortensen, Colin Farrell and Joel Edgerton star.
Pic is produced by Brian Grazer, Howard, and Karen Lunder of Imagine Entertainment, P.J. van Sandwijk of of Storyteller Productions and Gabrielle Tana of Magnolia Mae.
MGM via its distribution and marketing arm United Artists Releasing can boast the highest-grossing drama during the pandemic, that being Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci with over $52 million domestic and close to $129M worldwide.
The movie is up for three SAG Awards including Best Actress for Lady Gaga, Best Supporting Actor for Jared Leto and Best Ensemble.
Say what you will about adults not coming back to the cinema during the pandemic, but Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza is also holding very well (around -28% average throughout seven weekends, excluding its expansion during a nine-weekend run), Its is seeing $10.78 million domestic, ahead of the filmmaker’s pervious 1970s L.A.-set movie, Inherent Vice, which made $8.1M.
