THE WATCHERS (2024): Dakota Fanning’s Upcoming Suspense Thriller Moves Back to its Original Release Date

The Watchers Goes Back to its Original Release Plan

The upcoming New Line thriller, The Watchers, has changed its release date from June 14th back to the June 7th date it originally planned.

Watch out Bad Boys, Will Smith and Martin Lawrence. Whatcha gonna do when The Watchers come for you? Hmm, in one of the more interesting box-office opening weekend battles of June, The Watchers will now compete with the new Bad Boys picture instead of the new Inside Out movie The Watchers would have faced on June 14th. That’s because New Line Cinema has shifted the release date of The Watchers from June 14th back to June 7th after the new The Crow movie bowed out of its release plan for that date. Though Sony’s Bad Boys: Ride or Die should easily win the weekend, it’s a bold move for New Line to go up against Smith and Lawrence’s tentpole picture.

Ishana Night Shyamalan directs Dakota Fanning in The Watchers, a terrifying tale of a group of folks who are stalked by “mysterious” creatures. Remember M. Night Shyamalan used to put out box-office hits when he was in his prime and now that his daughter, Ishana, has directed a movie, perhaps, viewers will come out in droves like they used to do for Ishana’s dad’s pictures oh say twenty years ago. The Village opened with $50 million back in 2004 and it would take that sort of gross to potentially unseat the new Bad Boys picture from winning the frame the weekend of June 7th. Trailers for The Watchers are everywhere (on TV and in theaters, etc.) and they are a bit hard to decipher which will leave audiences anxious to see the new picture to find out just, exactly, what its major twist is going to be.

The Shyamalans and New Line/Warner Bros. just may be hoping people have grown tired of going to Will Smith movies after his slap at the Academy Awards ceremony a couple of years ago. But, it’s going to be a tight race for number 1 whether Smith fans will show up in droves or not. Dakota Fanning has had a long history of doing films that have performed well financially and her time has come to topline a blockbuster. Whether this one will be it or not remains to be seen.

Unfortunately for The Watchers, twisty horror movies don’t tend to have long legs as The Village proved in 2004 and many movies throughout the years have solidified that fact. So, the new movie will certainly be front-loaded and needs to make a lot at the start to be a hit. At this publication time, I cannot seem to locate the MPAA rating for The Watchers. That will be a big indicator on whether or not it will have the potential to take the number one spot from the Bad Boys picture. A “PG-13” would possibly help win the spot but an “R” may also reel in true horror buffs. Time will tell how Fanning’s film will hold up at the box-office versus the Bad Boys.

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