‘No Time To Die’ And ‘Quiet Place 2’ Are Both Currently Positioned To Shatter Box Office Records

John Krasinski and Emily Blunt’s A Quiet Place Part II should easily snag the biggest Labor Day opening while the 25h James Bond movie, No Time To Die, should become the biggest-ever live-action Thanksgiving hit.

I will admit that in my haste to pen a post about Paramount moving Top Gun: Maverick to December 23 of this year, I didn’t even catch (until later) that they had also rescheduled A Quiet Place Part II for September 4. Paramount at least thinks theaters will be viable enough to justify dropping their two biggest films in the last few months of 2020. SpongeBob Movie: Sponge On the Run (shot by Larry Fong, which I guess means I need to see it in IMAX
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now) will open July 31, having been delayed from its Memorial Day slot. Speaking of holidays, A Quiet Place Part II will now open over Labor Day weekend. If this all holds, then both A Quiet Place Part II and No Time to Die (now slated for Thanksgiving) could shatter existing holiday-specific box office records.

Yes, the John Krasinski-directed and Emily Blunt-starring horror sequel, which was delayed just days before the “All Media” screening (making me quite jealous of those who saw it and raved about it via earlier junket screenings), will open just one week before New Line and Warner Bros
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.’ The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, which is currently scheduled for September 11, 2020. But more intriguingly, at least to me, is that the horror sequel is set to open on one of the least-busy holiday frames of the year. Unlike Memorial Day, Independence Day weekend, Thanksgiving or Christmas, Labor Day weekend is not usually the home for box office blow-outs. But if A Quiet Place opens anywhere near the over/under $60 million it was tracking at before it got pulled, it’ll easily be the biggest movie ever to launch on Labor Day weekend.

For reference, the current record holder for the biggest Labor Day weekend launch remains the $30.5 million Fri-Mon debut of Rob Zombie’s Halloween remake. There are, not accounting for inflation, just seven movies that have opened over Labor Day (Jeepers Creepers, The American, Jeepers Creepers 2, One Direction: This is Us, Transporter 2, The Possession and Halloween) to open above even $15 million, let alone the mega-launches usually associated with holiday weekends. Labor Day usually marks the end of the summer movie season, with a B-movie opener (or a star-driven thriller aimed at adults) doing its thing alongside the last biggies of the summer. Of course, with much of the nation’s schools being closed, and theaters themselves being closed at least until mid-June, the usual rules of what release dates mean to what movies may be out the window.

For example, under normal circumstances, Wonder Woman 1984 opening on August 14 would make it the last big movie of the summer. However, if things don’t improve before July, it would be the “first” big movie of the 2020 summer movie season. Nonetheless, Labor Day weekend is a holiday frame where the biggest opening weekend is $30.5 million over four days and the biggest domestic total for such an opener is still the $58 million cume of the aforementioned Halloween remake. Fast Times at Ridgemont High earned $27 million in 1982 from this weekend ($83 million adjusted for inflation) while Dead Again earned $38 million in 1991 ($82 million adjusted), so I can’t imagine A Quiet Place part II, which was the buzzy sequel to a leggy, acclaimed and much-loved predecessor, not shattering those milestones in a matter of days.

But A Quiet Place Part II isn’t the only delayed movie now set to make new box office records. No Time to Die is going to open on November 25, the day before Thanksgiving, making it the (very) rare “big” live-action movie to launch on this specific holiday weekend. At least since 2000, the pattern has been for the big live-action flick to open before the holiday weekend, with an animated film (often from Disney
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) following up on the actual Wed-Sun holiday. The Grinch in 2000 gave way to 19 years of YA fantasy flicks (four Harry Potter movies, two Fantastic Beasts films, three Hunger Games sequels and four Twilight Saga flicks) along with Justice League in 2017. This year, it was supposed to be Godzilla Vs. Kong on November 20 and Disney’s Raya and the Last Dragon on November 25.

We’ll see if either of those films end up opening as scheduled, as Godzilla vs. Kong was banking on access to IMAX screens and a place as the court-appointed live action event film of the season. James Bond 25 messed up both of those plans. Regardless, No Time to Die opening on Thanksgiving means that the Daniel Craig 007 film will almost certainly become the biggest-grossing live-action movie ever to open on this weekend, as well as the second-biggest period behind Walt Disney’s Frozen ($400 million domestic and $1.276 billion worldwide from a $93 million Wed-Sun wide release expansion in 2013). In terms of domestic earnings, it merely needs to pass the $163 million cume of Knives Out (which would ironically put it on par with Die Another Day, Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace) to be the second-biggest non-adjusted domestic Thanksgiving flick ever.

In terms of inflation, the top such earners are Back to the Future Part II ($118 million in 1989/$268 million adjusted) and Rocky IV ($127 million in 1985/$325 million adjusted). The inflation-adjusted milestone may be “mission difficult” for James Bond (Spectre earned $200 million in 2015 while Skyfall earned a ridiculous $304 million in 2012), but not necessarily mission: impossible. Top Gun: Maverick moving into the December 23 slot means that No Time to Die won’t be the only big action movie for non-fantasy moviegoers. We’ll see if anything bigger than Dune ends up in the key December 18 slot (even with the shot-with-IMAX-cameras Top Gun: Maverick getting IMAX screens over the holiday). But the Thanksgiving holiday has been defined for a generation by a big YA fantasy flick in the pre-holiday weekend and a big animated flick on the actual holiday weekend.

Cary Fukunaga’s spy thriller has a chance to make history just by playing like an average (give or take inflation and overseas expansion) 007 movie. The two biggest Thanksgiving openers, in terms of unadjusted grosses, are Frozen ($1.276 billion) and Coco ($800 million worldwide), and it stands to reason that No Time to Die will end up between those two. John Krasinski’s A Quiet Place part II is the first true tentpole movie to open on Labor Day weekend since… ever? If you’re arguing that those films are big enough that they would be huge no matter where they opened, well, I imagine one bit of fallout will be more very big movies opening in unconventional release dates. Hollywood will perhaps go all-in with year-round tentpole scheduling, and we’ll see how much release dates matter for the biggest of big movies.