Photo: Paramount Pictures
In April, at Las Vegas’ Cinemacon, the trailer for writer-director John Krasinski’s IF debuted to what studio execs euphemistically called a “muted” reaction, but one that might more accurately be described as a resounding who-gives-a-shit? 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. “My impression was meh,” says an executive from a rival studio who attended the Paramount presentation. “I didn’t think it looked terrible, but also not terribly memorable or inspired.” Richard Rushfield, the founder of entertainment newsletter The Ankler, echoes that refrain: “I don’t really remember anything much about it.”
The Cinemacon footage features star Ryan Reynolds corralling a coterie of fanciful computer-generated creatures voiced by the likes of Steve Carrell, Awkwafina, Bradley Cooper, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge. According to a convention attendee who was backstage at the event, Paramount studio brass freaked out about the crowd’s lack of enthusiasm, perceiving it as the “worst response” of anything they showed. Early reviews have been apathetic, too: Krasinski’s CGI-live-action ode to inner children is sitting at a decidedly not-fresh 55 percent on the Tomatometer.
Yet according to pre-release “tracking” estimates, IF is looking at a three-day domestic opening somewhere in the neighborhood of $40 million this weekend. That would be a remarkable showing not only for writer-director-star Krasinski, the erstwhile Jim from The Office and Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan, who has precisely zero experience with children’s movies to date. It would also stand as a triumph of original IP in a popcorn-movie season whose other big family-friendly titles — The Garfield Movie, Inside Out 2 and Despicable Me 4 — are either heritage cartoons or franchise continuations. Why in the world would a kids’ flick starring Deadpool and directed by the A Quiet Place horrormeister overcome indifferent buzz and bad reviews to win the box office this weekend?
Box-office analysts point to the relative dearth of family-friendly films in wide release, the last being Kung Fu Panda 4, which arrived at the cineplex in early March. Then there is the “sticky concept” of imaginary friends, with IF plotted around a preteen girl (Cailey Fleming) able to see the make-believe playmates — i.e., a farting Gummy Bear, a talking mouse, green slime, a bubble with eyes — now invisible to the adults who have outgrown them (Reynolds plays her neighbor who, for mysterious reasons, can also interact with IFs, as they’re called in the film). And studio executives point out that Cinemacon, for all its renown as a hive of buzz for debuting movie trailers and exclusive featurettes, does not historically supply make-or-break word of mouth for family films. “Yes, [buzz] helps put movies on the map, like, Oh, I heard it was great at Cinemacon,” says one backlot insider. “But Cinemacon can just be an in-room reaction. There are movies that crush there that never open — and vice versa.”
IF was green-lighted by Paramount in 2019, just a year after Krasinski shocked Hollywood by co-writing, directing, and starring in the family drama/monster movie A Quiet Place (which grossed $340 million on a $17 million budget and launched a new franchise for the Melrose-based studio with a third, prequel installment, A Quiet Place: Day One, due in theaters June 28). So it would be easy to assume the filmmaker’s first foray into children’s fantasy-comedy came about as a studio indulgence: the kind of reluctant-but-necessary goodwill project intended to keep Krasinski in the Paramount fold despite his seeming underqualification to deliver a hit in the genre.
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 rather than begrudgingly put it into production, Paramount prevailed over Sony and Lionsgate for the rights to make and distribute the film for an undisclosed amount.
For the last five months, the studio has remained in promotional overdrive, which directly correlates with IF’s high score of 16 in “unaided awareness” on pre-release tracking surveys with people mentioning the movie by name when asked the question: “What is coming out that are you most looking forward to seeing?” (To put that figure in perspective, Kung Fu Panda 4, which grossed $529.7 million worldwide, had a 15 “unaided awareness” according to the same survey.) 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.
“Unaided awareness is really high,” says David Herrin, founder of the film data analysis and research firm the Quorum. “All of the tracking metrics are really pretty high. And that’s all in the marketing. Paramount has done a really nice job of establishing these characters beyond Ryan Reynolds. There hasn’t been a family film in the marketplace for a few weeks. So all of that stuff points to, Yeah, okay, this movie might work.”
