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IF Looked Like a Surefire Bomb. Now It Might Win Opening Weekend.
How a kids’ flick starring Deadpool is going to overcome indifferent buzz and bad reviews to win the box office this weekend.
Amid a panel that previewed new footage from Paramount’s upcoming tentpoles including Transformers One, Sonic the Hedgehog 3, and Ridley Scott’s Gladiator 2, the clip for Krasinski’s PG-13 kids’ flick about imaginary friends (and the humans who love them) landed with a thud. Teaming up for a package deal with producer-star Reynolds, however — who was then attempting to avoid being typecast for his hard R-rated “merc with a mouth” antics in Deadpool with such family-friendly vehicles as the video-game action-comedy Free Guy and Apple TV+’s Christmas musical satire Spirited — Krasinski triggered a bidding war with his “high concept” IF script. And at a precarious financial inflection point when the studio’s corporate parent, Paramount Global, has been negotiating competing bids to either merge with Sony or sell to Skydance Media, some tracking surveys have indicated that IF could gross as much as $50 million over its North American debut in 4,000 theaters.
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