Yahoo Lifestyle ‘Dog Man’ to Lead Box Office Pack Again as Ke Huy Quan’s ‘Love Hurts’ and Slasher ‘Heart Eyes’ Target Single-Digit Starts
“Dog Man” is expected to lead the box office pack as two newcomers, Universal’s action comedy “Love Hurts” and Sony’s gory slasher “Heart Eyes,” join the fray.
In what’s expected to be another chilly winter weekend for cinemas, “Love Hurts” and Heart Eyes” are each targeting single-digit debuts of $7 million to $8 million. That should leave “Dog Man,” Universal and DreamWorks Animation’s family film about a police officer who becomes surgically fused to his faithful pup after getting injured on the job, to lead again with $19 million to $22 million in its second outing.
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This won’t be the slowest Super Bowl box office on record — that dreadful distinction belongs to 2024’s haul of $42 million across all films, led by “Argylle” and “Lisa Frankenstein.” But movie theater attendance tends to stall around the weekend of the big game, which is regularly the most-watched television event of the year. And based on projections, this Sunday’s matchup between Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles won’t be much different than year’s past. Ticket sales aren’t expected to pick up in earnest until the following weekend as Disney and Marvel’s “Captain America: Brave New World” and Sony’s “Paddington in Peru” touch down in theaters on Feb. 14.
“Love Hurts,” led by Ke Huy Quan and Ariana DeBose, will be released in 3,200 North American theaters as well as 30 international markets. The movie carries a modest $18 million price tag, so it won’t require much to turn a profit in its theatrical run. Stunt coordinator Jonathan Eusebio, whose credits include such action blockbusters as “Black Panther,” “The Avengers” and “John Wick,” directed the R-rated film in his feature debut. Quan, in his first major role since his Oscar-winning performance in “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” stars as a mild-mannered realtor. His past as a violent hitman comes back to haunt him after he finds out his left-for-dead former partner-in-crime is very much alive.
“Heart Eyes,” which also cost $18 million to produce, is playing in roughly 3,000 venues over the weekend. Directed by Josh Ruben and starring Olivia Holt (Marvel’s “Cloak and Dagger”) and Mason Gooding (“Scream”), “Heart Eyes” follows an infamous masked murderer known as the Heart Eyes Killer, whose modus operandi is slaying couples on Valentine’s Day. Reviews have been surprisingly killer for the slasher genre, with Variety’s Courtney Howard describing “Heart Eyes” as a “breezy rom-com slasher that slices and dices with charm.” In her review, she wrote, “thoroughly self-aware, stocked with self-reflexive gags and gorily-orchestrated kills, this genre mashup is endearing with its delightfully zippy charms. It makes us swoon and squirm in equal measure.”
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