New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

Kim Hollis: Black Mass, the Johnny Depp starring vehicle, earned $22.6 as it debuted this weekend. What do you think of this result?

Edwin Davies: This is a solid opening for a film of this genre, i.e. a fairly violent, somewhat awards baity gangster movie. It's pretty much in line with what The Departed and The Town earned, both of which showed legs because they appealed to an older audience who came out over time to check them out, and because they quickly became buzzed about as possible Oscar contenders. Black Mass may not perform as well as either of those did, but it should have no problem meeting its mid-50 million dollar budget domestically, and Depp's international appeal should help it break out overseas.

The positive reviews are probably the most notable part of this opening. In comparing it to recent films in his filmography, both The Lone Ranger and Dark Shadows opened higher than this, but they were critically reviled and hugely expensive. Black Mass is the first film Depp has headlined since Rango back in 2011 to get generally positive reviews*, and the idea that he has maybe turned a corner after years of doing bad work in bad films might help fuel the desire of people to see it.

*Into The Woods is the closest he's come in that time, but I've excluded it from this consideration because he was only in two scenes, was buried deep in the cast, and the ads seemed to go out of their way to hide the fact he was even in it.

Jason Barney: Good for Depp. Black Mass seems to have opened high enough for this to easily have domestic dollars surpass the budget. By how much remains to be seen, but the international numbers should be more than enough to drive this to profitability. Depp seems to be out of the speed bump that has lasted a few years. I won't spend any time going into any great detail about his slump, others seem to go to great length to do so.

I'll just say Depp was so big with the Pirates movies and some of his other zany characters that he was bound to even out a little bit. Black Mass is a return to form for him; its success is much more closely aligned with his career than the last couple of years.

Ryan Kyle: This is very much in line with other recent gangster-flick openings, grossing just about $1 million less than The Town, which was released this same weekend. We will have to see if the legs match that film's monster performance, but things are off to a good start. This is also a win for Depp whose last attempts at courting an adult audience (Mortdecai, Transcendence, The Rum Diary, The Tourist) flopped spectacularly. WB did a great job positioning the film as something for more sophisticated audiences, but also commercial (not an easy feat). Black Mass isn't too far off from Depp's other gangster flick opening, Public Enemies ($25.3 million back in 2009 in Depp's prime), which had a 4x multiplier. I predict Black Mass to end up with $70 million at the very least.

Continued:       1       2