By Chris Kavan - 07/19/18 at 06:47 AM CT
As the summer winds down, thus do the new releases. In fact, this weekend brings us naught but a trio of sequels - a musical, a vigilante and a reason to stay off that laptop you found at a steal of a deal. I have a feeling the new films are going to have a minimal effect at the box office with the continued competition from Hotel Transylvania 3, Ant-Man and the Wasp and dare I say, even Skyscraper (probably not, though). After weekend after weekend of massive openings, this one may be a bit more subdued.
MAMMA MIA! HERE WE GO AGAIN Loath as I am to admit it, Mamma Mia! was a pretty big hit - over $144 million domestic, nearly $500 million worldwide. Not bad for a film based around Abba songs. It helped that it had a dynamite cast: Meryl Streep, Amanda Seyfried, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgård, Julie Walters and Christine Baranski among them. And pretty much all of them are back for the sequel - as well as Lily James, Jeremy Irvine, Josh Dylan, Hugh Skinner and even Cher. The film follows Sophie (Seyfried) who is dealing with her new pregnancy as we get a look back in time to the life of young Donna (James) and the three men in her life. I mean, it looks like a perfectly Mamma Mia sequel - more Abba music, more fun, more women to drag their significant others in their life to watch. I had no qualms about skipping the original and I think I'll be just find doing the same for the sequel. I put it first because this seems to be targeting a female audience - an audience that has been overlooked for far too long and if they show up, it could be the big winner.
Going from a musical to a madman. Well, maybe that's too far, Denzel Washington helped protect Chloë Grace Moretz from some dangerous individuals by using a certain set of skills in the first film. This time around his friend, Susan Plummer (Melissa Leo), is murdered and once again he must put his skills to test in order to track down and bring justice to those responsible. The first film had a modest budget and a modest return. Frankly I'm surprised it was good enough to warrant a sequel, but here we are. I have not yet seen the first film (though it is on my list) but Washington is a solid enough draw. Add in Pedro Pascal, a returning Bill Pullman and some names like Jonathan Scarfe, Orson Bean and Sakina Jaffrey - well, it should turn out if not as big as the first, hopefully good enough to justify the cost and talent involved. I'm not expecting this to break records, but hopefully it will land somewhere in the middle of the pack rather than a faceplant.
UNFRIENDED: DARK WEB Back in 2014, the original Unfriended was one of the original horror films that took place (mostly) from the inside of a computer screen looking out while a group of friends could do nothing as some evil entity took their lives one by one. I'm a bit surprised it took this long to get a sequel and now that it's not such a fresh idea, I don't see it having much of an impact now that the novelty has worn off. This time around our group of soon-to-be-dead friends find themselves part of a "game" when a stolen laptop leads to some dark places on the web - dark and supernatural apparently. This is the kind of movie I'm going to stream some night when I'm really bored and need a horror fix (happens more often than I'd like to admit). That's me, but as for the weekend, it's not going to be a factor at all.
An all-sequel weekend awaits but I have a sneaking suspicion this second time around isn't going to be that impressive. We'll find out come Sunday.
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