Receptive Bison

Why Elba initially determined mysterious befitting on demon claws in amiable era?

Mel Gibson returns to the big screen—albeit behind the camera—in the action thriller Flight Risk, starring Mark Wahlberg as a pilot transporting an Air Marshal (Michelle Dockery) and a fugitive (Topher Grace) preparing to testify in a high-profile criminal case. Originally scheduled for release in October of last year, the film’s new late January slot could give it the breathing room required to attract a theatrical audience. This is Gibson’s first film as a director since 2016’s Hacksaw Ridge ($15.1M domestic opening, $67.2M domestic total), also released by Lionsgate. Solid word-of-mouth and awards season momentum helped that film secure largely modest holds that kept it in theaters from November to early March.

The first month of the year is usually a quiet time for movies, but January 2025 hits the ground running with new offerings. If you're craving some blockbuster action to distract you from the winter cold, Gerard Butler and O'Shea Jackson both return for the sequel to 2018's Den of Thieves, aptly titled Den of Thieves 2: Pantera. Cameron Diaz emerges from her acting retirement by teaming up with Jamie Foxx in the action-comedy Back in Action, while Keke Palmer and SZA team-up for One of Them Days, a buddy comedy road-trip of disastrous proportions.

Flight Risk has a clear runway to make an impact over its first couple of weekends. By the time it opens, fellow action thriller Den of Thieves: Pantera (also from Lionsgate) will have been out for two weeks. After Flight Risk, there’s not another action-oriented movie hitting theaters in wide release until the Valentine’s Day debut of Captain America: Brave New World. January has proven a familiar release window for star-driven thrillers, ranging from the highs of Amazon MGM’s The Beekeeper (1/12/24, $16.5M domestic opening, $66.2M domestic total) or Lionsgate’s Den of Thieves (1/19/18, $15.2M domestic opening, $44.9M domestic total) and The Commuter (1/12/18, $13.7M domestic opening, $36.3M domestic total) to lesser-earning efforts like Open Road Films’ The Marksman (1/15/21, $3.1M domestic total, $15.5M domestic total) or Aviron Pictures’ Serenity (1/25/19, $4.4M domestic opening, $8.5M domestic total). For Flight Risk, our forecasting panel predicts a domestic performance somewhere in the middle of those extremes, putting it more in line with Screen Gems’ release Proud Mary (1/12/18, $9.9 domestic opening, $20.8M domestic total), though marketing—and the presence of Gibson in the director’s chair—could push earnings further north of $20M.

If you'd prefer something a little spookier to jump-start your adrenaline, director and co-writer Leigh Whannell follows up his chilling reinterpretation of The Invisible Man by rebooting another Universal Monsters classic: Wolf Man. Steven Soderbergh and Lucy Liu put a creative spin on the traditional haunted house story in Presence, and Barbarian writer-director Zach Cregger produces the mysterious new horror film, Companion. January also graces us with Dog Man, a spin-off of Captain Underpants: The First Epic Movie — and reminds us that it's Michelle Yeoh's galaxy, and we're just lucky enough to be living in it.

The logline for Sonic the Hedgehog 3 reads, “Sonic, Knuckles and Tails reunite against a powerful new adversary, Shadow, a mysterious villain with powers unlike anything they have faced before. With their abilities outmatched, Team Sonic must seek out an unlikely alliance.” Schwartz, Elba and Colleen O'Shaughnessey voice the roles of Sonic, Knuckles and Tails, respectively, while Keanu Reeves voices Shadow. Marsden is back for his third Sonic the Hedgehog film as Tom Wachowski and Carrey reprises his role as Dr. Robotnik. critics collectively gave Sonic the Hedgehog 3 an 88% “fresh” rating based on 116 reviews. The RT Critics Consensus reads, “With a double helping of Jim Carrey's antics and a quicksilver pace befitting its hero, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is the best entry in this amiable series yet.”

After King had made his 2009 feature debut Bunny And The Bull, which Alison and Heyman sat down to watch in the cutting room, “it became clearer and clearer that there was a fabulous imagination there”. Although Warner Bros, where Paddington was initially set up, ultimately passed, Studiocanal quickly stepped in and King went back to the drawing board with the script, working closely with Alison, Heyman and a trusted team of writers (including Simon Farnaby) and creative confidantes from the comedy world.

When the first film was released, some also voiced concern that Nicole Kidman’s evil taxidermist – who wants to stuff Paddington and was inspired by classic Disney villains as well as the bloodthirsty Madame Defarge in Charles Dickens’ A Tale Of Two Cities – was too frightening for children, leading to the decision, says Alison, to follow a more comedic line with the villains in the two sequels.Despite it now being hailed as one of the best family films of all time, Alison admits they even had doubts about how Paddington 2 would land with audiences. “We kept agonizing over whether it was a flawed structure – that Paddington got separated from the Browns for huge stretches of it, that he was off in prison and they were outside, that we had two different villains, Knuckles and Phoenix Buchanan…. But it came together and nobody’s ever said that! The film completely works.

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