As movie theaters slowly reopen and the CDC releases new guidelines for mask-wearing, many were opening that the box office would star to bounce back after a year of stagnancy due to the pandemic. While the blockbuster Godzilla vs. Kong proved to be a box office hit, the new thriller from Yellowstone creator Taylor Sheridan has failed to get off the ground in its opening weekend. Those Who Wish Me Dead features Angelina Jolie in a starring role as a smokejumper who helps a teenage boy on the run from two assassins after he witnesses the murder of his father.
Those Who Wish Me Dead pulled a meager $2.8 million at the US box office ($7.8 million worldwide) despite opening on 3,188 screens. Considering only 65% of movie theaters have reopened, that is large number of theaters for a more modest, adult thriller. Like Godzilla vs. Kong and Mortal Kombat, Those Who Wish Me Dead was also released concurrently on HBO Max as part of their partnership with Warner Brothers for their 2021 releases. However, Those Who Wish Me Dead was not able to drum up the box office numbers that the more CGI-heavy films did.
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“The film was barely promoted even by pandemic standards and effectively went under the radar as both as a theatrical and streaming release,” Shawn Robbins, the chief analyst at Box Office Pro, surmised. “We’ve seen a number of genre thrillers aimed at audiences of a certain age open during the past year, so there could also be an element of saturation in play.” The film industry is undergoing a huge shift due to the pandemic and the meteoric rise of streaming services, so we’ll have to wait and see what happens moving forward for films that aren’t franchise blockbusters coming from well-known IPs.
Those Who Wish Me Dead also marked Angelina Jolie’s return to acting after focusing for years on directing. “I love directing, but I had a change in my family situation that’s not made it possible for me to direct for a few years,” Jolie said in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. “I needed to just do shorter jobs and be home more, so I kind of went back to doing a few acting jobs. That’s really the truth of it.” Hopefully she has better luck with the upcoming Marvel film, Eternals.
