After several weeks of limited movement, a handful of new releases prompted a pretty thorough shakeup of the Box Office Top 10. While Beauty and the Beast continued its unstoppable assault on the domestic box office, we also said hello this weekend to three new movies and goodbye to a handful of old favorites from the first few months of the year. Let’s start with the estimated numbers as of Sunday afternoon.
As ScreenCrush managing editor Matt Singer recently noted, March is now the beginning of the summer movie season. That means saying goodbye to all the middling horror movies, low-concept boutique pictures, and genre films we used to see in March and cutting straight to the $100 million dollar blockbusters that are looking for any competitive edge. Last year, the big release at the end of March was the gloomy Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice; this year we’re going to get the gentler kid’s version of that movie in Power Rangers, a film about people in bulky suits and flying machines fighting CGI monsters. It’s kind of a nice parallel.
Just in case you forgot, that Power Rangers movie is still coming out in March, and Lionsgate has rolled out a brand-new poster that gives us a closer look at those Zords. Until now, all we’ve seen of the beasties are little bits and pieces, but now we know for sure what at least two of them look like. And, yes, they’re very big.
Every new image from the Power Rangers movie is like a fun game of “what the heck is that?” Based on what we’ve seen so far, we’ve determined the aesthetic to be somewhere in the ballpark of “Joel Schumacher’s avant garde Mortal Kombat.” Today brings another puzzling image that makes for the most challenging round of this game yet, offering what is allegedly our first look at Bryan Cranston as Zordon — but what is it, really? No, seriously. You tell us.
You know that Power Rangers movie that still seems to be happening, despite there being absolutely no reason for it to be? You know how Elizabeth Banks is playing the villain? You know how the villain is Sexy Rita Repulsa (which is something I never thought I’d ever type unless I was looking for bad Halloween costumes)? The mind continues to boggle at every turn with this movie, and it’s honestly impossible at this point to predict whether it will be good, bad, or so bad it’s good. But Elizabeth Banks is a talented actress who’s clearly not afraid to put on a lot of weird makeup and outfits for her characters, as evidenced by all four of the Hunger Games movies. Lionsgate released a new image of her Rita Repulsa, complete with evil scepter.