Open Road Is Staying In The ‘Liam Neeson: Action Hero’ Business

Honest Thief debuts on “electronic sell-through” today while The Marksman will be in theaters on January 22, 2021.

Open Road is apparently pretty happy with the theatrical results (or presumed future VOD/DVD revenue) for Liam Neeson’s Honest Thief, as they just announced that they are distributing the next Liam Neeson actioner in just over a month from today. The Marksman, previously titled The Minute Man, concerns an Arizona rancher who ends up having to protect an 11-year-old migrant (Jacob Perez) after he and his mother (Teresa Ruiz) are attacked by drug cartel assassins.

We got a trailer a few days ago, as well as a release date of January 22, 2021. There is a certain appropriateness in Open Road again boarding the “Liam Neeson action hero” train. Not only was Honest Thief the first movie of their post-bankruptcy existence, but The Gray was the distributor’s first chart-topping debut way back in January of 2012. The acclaimed Joe Carnahan-directed survival drama nabbed $19.5 million on the way to an $51.5 million domestic and $81 million global cume on a $25 million budget.

That’s still their third-biggest grosser behind The Nut Job ($64 million domestic and $122 million worldwide in 2014) and the Best Picture-winning Spotlight ($45 million domestic and $99 million worldwide in 2015). Open Road was initially intended as a distributor partially owned by AMC and Regal for the purpose of providing multiplex theaters with mid-budget, star-driven studio programmers during the proverbial “off-season,” or when the biggies weren’t offering a deluge of tentpoles.

Alas, the strategy ran headfirst into two “new normal.” First, Hollywood started offering more would-be tentpoles and franchise biggies year-round as opposed to only during the summer months and holiday weekends. Second, the audience that once showed up to theaters to see “just a movie” gravitated to streaming and VOD platforms, leaving old-school “movie-movies” in the lurch.

Honest Thief did earn $13.6 million domestic (from a $4.1 million debut) and $27.5 million worldwide in theaters. That’s way below the norm for a Liam Neeson action thriller, as most of his vehicles (A Walk Among the Tombstones, Run All Night, The Commuter, Cold Pursuit, etc.) nabbed opening weekends between $11 million and $14 million.

Honest Thief, about a bank robber who tries to turn himself only to run into corrupt cops, debuts on electronic-sell-through today, meaning you can buy it digitally for $20. So if you wanted to see it in theaters in September but wouldn’t or couldn’t, well, here you go.