Box office preview: Genre films take on ‘Civil War,’ with vampire flick ‘Abigail’ leading the way

The April of genre showers continues with four new wide releases and another expanding nationwide, offering quite a bit of variety. Can any of the take down reigning champion “Civil War”? Read on for Gold Derby’s box office preview.

First up is the new horror film, “Abigail,” from the filmmaking collective known as Radio Silence, who directed the last two “Scream” movies. This one involves a band of criminals who kidnap the young daughter of a powerful crime lord to get money from him, holding her in a mansion where they learn that … she’s a vampire! The filmmakers reunite with Melissa Barrera from their “Scream” films, who is joined by Dan Stevens, Kathryn Newton, Giancarlo Esposito, Matthew Goode and the title character is played by young Alisha Weir.

Universal does love its vampires. After all, it was the studio that made “Dracula” famous, going all the way back to the Bela Lugosi classic in 1931. More recently, they released “Renfield,” starring Nicholas Hoult with Nicolas Cage as Dracula, and “The Last Voyage of the Demeter” last year. “Renfield” opened with just $8 million, while “Demeter” did even worse, opening with just $6.5 million … and those are movies involving a known vampire, rather than just a little girl named “Abigail.”

Reviews so far, mostly from horror outlets, have generally been positive, so Universal isn’t exactly hiding reviews for this one. Because of that, there’s a good shot this one can make $14 to 16 million, based on the strong premise and promise of gore, as well as a continued general interest in elevated horror. That would be enough for “Abigail” to knock Alex Garland‘s “Civil War” down to second place.

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Filmmaker Guy Ritchie returns with his fifth movie since the pandemic, the historic war story that is “The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare,” produced by none other than Jerry Bruckheimer (“Top Gun: Maverick”) and starring Henry Cavill, Eiza González, Alan Ritchson, Alex Pettyfer, Hero Fiennes Tiffin, with Henry Golding and Cary Elwes. Based on recent declassified files by the British War Department, the action-comedy tells the story of a secret forces military operation put together by Winston Churchill on a mission to put a stop to the Nazi’s U-boat dominance in the Atlantic during WWII.

In some ways, this follows Ritchie’s interest in spy films, having brought “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” to theaters in 2015, that one also starring a post-“Man of Steel” Cavill, but it only opened with $13.42 million. More recently, Ritchie’s former producer Matthew Vaughn directed the spy movie “Argylle,” which also starred Cavill, but only opened with $17.5 million in February on its way to $45.2 million domestic. (Vaughn had more success with two of his three “Kingsmen” spy movies.) There are also aspects to this film that are reminiscent of George Clooney‘s 2014 war film “The Monuments Men,” and that opened to $22 million on its way to $158.7 million worldwide.

Other than Ritchie’s foray into the world of Disney with the live action “Aladdin,” which grossed a billion worldwide, and his two “Sherlock Holmes” movies, Ritchie hasn’t really had many movies make more than $45 million domestically, and COVID certainly hasn’t helped.

It will be interesting to see if “Ministry” can find an audience in North America similar to some of Ritchie’s other movies, though a British historical spy movie certainly is a bit of a stretch that might struggle to make $10 million opening weekend, though it could do well enough to take third place.

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The latest Anime feature from Crunchyroll is “Spy x Family Code: White” from filmmaker Takashi Katagiri, based on the popular Manga by Tatsuya Endo, the feature having been released in Japan last December. Oddly, this is also a spy comedy, involving a family – pretty evident from the title – including a little girl named Anya, whose latest mission has them entering a cooking competition at a prestigious academy.

Unlike some of Crunchyroll’s other movies, this isn’t based on a long-running anime series getting the theatrical treatment, but the film did make about $40 million overseas since opening last December. It’s very likely that American anime fans have heard about the movie and maybe this will be their first chance to see it, though you also have to presume it may have gotten into the country via piracy and such.

Anime box office tends to be hard to gauge and predict, but the anticipation for “Spy x Family” should help it bring in $7 to 9 million in roughly 2,000 theaters, especially since it will also be grabbing some IMAX and premium screens, likely putting it in fourth or fifth place against “Godzilla x Kong.”

Expanding nationwide into 600 or more theaters is Nathan and David Zellner‘s hard-to-define “Sasquatch Sunset,” starring Riley Keough and Jesse Eisenberg as two of a family of Sasquatches surviving in the wild. Normally, this sort of “out of the box” filmmaking might be something released by Neon or A24, but this one is from Bleecker Street (who released previous Zellner films), so we’ll have to see how well it expands, since it may have trouble getting into the top 10 even if it makes $2 million.

As with last week, we have a bunch of smaller releases, including Jeremy Warner‘s comedy “Villains Inc.,” starring Mallory Everton, Colin Mochrie (“Whose Line Is It Anyway?”) and Jason Gray. The movie premiered at the Austin Film Festival in 2023 and is supposed to get a moderately wide release by Purdie Distribution on Friday.

Matthew Modine stars in the true-life sports drama “Hard Miles,” playing Greg Townsend, who assembled a cycling team of troubled teenagers to ride from Denver to the Grand Canyon. This is getting a limited release from Blue Fox Entertainment, so we’ll see if it makes any sort of impact.

Sony Pictures Classics will release Minhal Baig‘s coming-of-age drama “We Grown Now,” co-starring Lil Rel Howery (“Get Out”) in New York, L.A., and Chicago this weekend before a wider rollout on April 26. Also, Neon is releasing Theda Hammel‘s pandemic comedy “Stress Positions,” co-starring John Early (“Search Party”), this Friday, both of those having premiered at film festivals.

Check back on Sunday to see how the new movies do against the returning ones.

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