Bloodshot Disappoints; Will We Ever See New Mutants?

This past Friday was the opening of the Valiant movie Bloodshot, starring Vin Diesel.

Kyle Pinion at the Beat called it “a largely sluggish, CGI overrun mess… so much of it is just a bland nothing.” It came in third this opening weekend, behind the latest Pixar cartoon and a faith-based film, with under $10 million. That’s not very good, but circumstances are incredibly unusual.

The bigger headline is that, due to quarantine concerns, the weekend box office hit a 22-year low. Theaters are closing, or cutting capacity in half, but the real problem seems to be people not wanting to go out and risk infection. Smart of them. As the NY Times quoted an expert saying,

“This weekend’s three new wide releases were not expected to do big business. Still, these openings are down 30 percent or more from where they would be under normal circumstances.”

Meanwhile, a number of films have had their release dates rescheduled or indefinitely delayed. The one of most interest to me (just out of curiosity) is The New Mutants. Originally filmed in 2017 for release in April 2018, it was moved to April 3, 2020, after Disney acquired the Fox studio. Now there is no release date due to the pandemic. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Disney simply throw it onto its streaming service, Disney+, but there may be contractural or other reasons to do an actual theater release, whatever the scale it winds up being.