Disney’s reboot Tron: Ares has started off its box office run with $4.8 million in previews from both Thursday showings and early access screenings on Wednesday.
The big-budget event pic is all but guaranteed to top the weekend box office chart with an estimated $40 million to $45 million, or at least that’s the hope. The threequel opens 15 years after the Tron: Legacy played in theaters, and was shepherded by former Disney exec Sean Bailey when serving as head of the Disney’s live-action studio. It remains to be seen whether audience scores can make up for decidedly mixed reviews (its current score on Rotten Tomatoes is 55 percent.)
Norwegian Disney vet Joachim Rønning directs the third film in the sci-fi franchise, which stars Jared Leto as the eponymous program, Ares, Greta Lee as Eve Kim, CEO of ENCOM, the tech corporation at the center of the series since the start, and Evan Peters as baddie Julian Dillinger. The pic’s net production budget is at least $180 million.
The other new major studio offering this weekend is Paramount’s romantic crime-caper comedy Roofman, starring Channing Tatum and Kirsten Dunst. Derek Cianfrance directed the pic, which co-stars LaKeith Stanfield, Juno Temple and Peter Dinklage.
Roofman earned $1 million in previews, and is tracking for a modest opening in the $8 million to $10 million range against an equally modest $19 million net production budget. It hopes to serve as counter-programming for females not interested in the male-skewing Tron installment, and boasts strong reviews (its Rotten Tomatoes score is presently 82 percent).
Based on a true story, Roofman follows the adventures of an Army veteran and struggling father who turns to robbing McDonald’s restaurants by cutting holes in their roofs, earning him the nickname Roofman. After escaping prison, he secretly lives inside a Toys “R” Us for six months, surviving undetected while planning his next move, but his double life begins to unravel when he falls in love.
Another new nationwide offering is Soul of Fire, from Sony’s faith-based Affirm label. The movie earned $575,000 in previews.
At the specialty box office, Amazon MGM Studios is going the platform route and opening Luca Guadagnino‘s psychological thriller After the Hunt, starring Julia Roberts, in 17 theaters. The awards contender, which also stars Ayo Edebiri, Andrew Garfield, Michael Stuhlbarg and Chloë Sevigny, is about a sexual assault accusation that tears apart Yale’s philosophy department.
The score for After the Hunt is from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, who are on double duty, having also done the score for Tron: Ares (in the latter they are credited by their band’s name, Nine Inch Nails).
