BFG, Purge: Election Year & Tarzan Open In Theaters This Weekend.

The BFG, The Purge: Election Year and The Legend of Tarzan open in movie theaters around St. Louis this weekend. Sing Street, Me Before You and Alice Through The Looking Glass begin showing  at Keller 8, while Race is among the movies now available to rent at Redbox.

The Purge: Election Year opens tonight at MX Movies in downtown St. Louis. Independence Day: Resurgence and Finding Dory are also playing this weekend.

Don’t pay regular price for a ticket to see one of these new releases in the theater. Sign up now for MoviePass at MoviePass.com.

Recapping Last Weekend

Finding Dory easily took the weekend box office crown for its second straight weekend in its second of release last weekend. The Pixar sequel made just short of $73 million to beat the $41 million debut of Independence Day: Resurgence.  Central Intelligence came in third place with $18.2 million in its second weekend of release and has now made almost $70 million at the box office against its $50 million budget. The Shallows debuted with $16.8 million to finish in fourth place over the weekend and The Conjuring 2 rounded out the top five with a $7.6 million third weekend.

Matthew McConaughey’s Free State of Jones made $7.6 million in its debut.

Opening This Weekend

The BFG

Steven Spielberg directs Disney’s The BFG (The Big Friendly Giant), based on a Ronald Dahl book, which hit theaters this weekend. The film is being called a very sanitized, friendly and fun adaptation of the book written by a man who wasn’t exactly wholesome. This film marks the last screenplay written by the late Melissa Mathison, who counted E.T., Twilight Zone: The Movie and The Indian in the Cupboard among her credits.

Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune raved about the performance by Mark Rylance in his review of The BFG. The headline on Lawrence Toppman’s review in the Charlotte Observer calls this one a“fairy tale for the ages.”

Todd M. Thatcher predicts an opening weekend of $26.6 million for The BFG.

The BFG trailer

The Purge: Election Year

Fans of the Purge franchise are raving about Election Year, the last film in the franchise in theaters this weekend. The Verge says this film makes the franchise “the zombie franchise we deserve.”

This third installment in the series looks at the political landscape in a world where all crimes are legal one day a year. Michael Phillips says it just might be “the harshest political commentary this year” while writing positively about the sequel.

Todd M. Thatcher predicts an opening weekend of $21.7 million for The Purge: Election Year.

The Purge: Election Year trailer

The Legend of Tarzan

The Legend of Tarzan, in theaters this weekend, may surprise you. It surprised the folks over at USA TODAY’s Straight Up Hollywood podcast. While they caution that the film won’t win any awards, they do make a point to say it’s worth paying to go see this weekend.

IGN was not as high on this film starring Alexander Skarsgard and Margot Robbie as USA TODAY was in their review so, take it for what you will.

Todd M. Thatcher predicts an opening weekend of $17.5 million for The Legend of Tarzan.

The Legend of Tarzan trailer

Catch It Before It’s Gone

Sing Street

The Chicago Tribune listed Sing Street as one of its top movies of 2016 thus far. The musical comedy gets a limited theater run in the area this weekend at Keller 8 Cinema in South County. The film was originally released back in April, but hasn’t played on more than 525 theaters across the country in a weekend. It has managed to make just more than $3 million domestically and another $5 million overseas, mostly in South Korea of all places.

A Hollywood Reporter review of the film spoke glowingly of director John Carney’ film, which focuses on his childhood in Dublin, Ireland in the 1980s.

Sing Street trailer

 Make It A Redbox Night

Race

Race didn’t exactly set the box office on fire like its subject, Jesse Owens, set the track on fire. The film made just $19 million during its nine-week theater run earlier this year. It’s a mostly-factual look at Owens’ life in the lead-up to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Stephan James portrays Owens while Jason Sudeikis has a nice turn as his coach, Larry Snyder.

Race is now available to rent at your local Redbox, along with Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Triple 9, Eye In The Sky and Precious Cargo.

Race trailer

Entertainment News

Lionsgate Buys Starz

Movie studio Lionsgate has bought the Starz cable network for $4.4 billion. The combined company will posess a film library of 16,000 films and shows, according to reports.

Sully Trailer Released

Tom Hanks stars as pilot Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger in this film about the “Miracle on the Hudson” directed by Clint Eastwood. The film is in theaters on September 9.

Sully trailer

 

Lost In Space Reboot Coming To Netflix

Reports are coming out that Netflix has picked up a 10-episode first season of a Lost In Space reboot. Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless are on board to write the series while Zack Estrin will direct. The premiere is set for 2018.

Lost In Space aired from 1965-1968 on CBS. The series was set in the far-away year of 1997 and saw the Robinson family lost in space after their space exploration mission is sabotaged.

Netflix Co-Founder Becomes MoviePass CEO

One of our favorite movie-watching services just picked up an interesting addition. MoviePass, which charges a monthly flat fee to see a virtually unlimited numbers of movies each month in theaters, has named Mitch Lowe as its CEO. Lowe worked with Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph to start Netflix and previously served as president and COO of Redbox as well as the VP of Operations at McDonald’s.

Lowe succeeds Stacy Spikes, the founding CEO of Moviepass.

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