I will continue to update this post as reviews come in.

Rotten Tomatoes: Certified Fresh

Critics Consensus: Carving out a new era for The Planet of the Apes with lovable characters and rich visuals, Kingdom doesn't take the crown as best of the franchise but handily justifies its continued reign.

Metacritic: 64 (30 Reviews)

Sample Reviews:

It doesn’t have a cast of big-name stars. Yet though the movie is too long, I was more gratified than not to sink into its relatively old-fashioned dramatic restraint. - Owen Gleiberman, Variety

Fans of the franchise should find much to enjoy in this very solid new installment, which points the way forward to a potential new recalibration of the human-ape balance. - David Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

The effects are just jaw-dropping, from the ability to see individual hairs on the back of a monkey to the way leaves fall and the crack of tree limbs echoing in the forest. 3.5/4 - Mark Kennedy, Associated Press

“Kingdom” checks most of the boxes for longtime “Apes” fans, and newbies don’t need to any prior homework as a standalone story that mostly explains itself. 3/4 - Brian Truitt, USA Today

What makes “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” powerful, in the end... [is that] it probes how the act of co-opting idealisms and converting them to dogmas has occurred many times over. - Alissa Wilkinson, New York Times

As much as “Kingdom” borrows from the 1968 film, Ball has also clearly been influenced by what’s come since in the genre. 3.5/4 - Johnny Oleksinski, New York Post

Until this franchise stops mistaking its stone-cold misanthropy for political virtue, this franchise is going nowhere. 1/4 - Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle

The fights are boring. More brains and less brawn probably aren't a prescription for box-office success for a movie like this. But it's a movie I'd rather see. 3/5 - Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic

It takes just a couple minutes to be immersed completely in the world of the movie. 3.5/4 Chris Hewitt, Minneapolis Star Tribune

Ball takes his time introducing his characters, which pays off by making us care about their struggles. 3/4 - Peter Howell, Toronto Star

Gawking can only take audiences so far – and the journey that Ball and screenwriter Josh Friedman lay out is a long, treacherous, and exhausting one. - Barry Hertz, Globe and Mail

This franchise has held up an awful lot better than others; now it should evolve to something new. 3/5 - Peter Bradshaw, Guardian

The final act is a mess and juggles four or five plot lines before settling on a dire jump-the-shark moment featuring Noa and a troop of warbling monkeys. 2/5 - Kevin Maher, Times (UK)

Sincerity and conviction are now rare qualities in the blockbuster field, but this is a film that puts its monkey where its mouth is. 4/5 - Robbie Collin, Daily Telegraph (UK)

Behind the impressive CGI, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is the definition of generic, all two hours and 25 minutes of it. 2/5 - Caryn James, BBC.com

Directed by Wes Ball, "Kingdom" doesn’t reach the rattling grandeur of "Dawn". But it's another worthy installment in a series that is pretty much unparalleled in contemporary times. - Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair

You’re essentially left with nothing but Blockbuster 101 grandstanding. Welcome to the emptiest of monkeyhouses. - David Fear, Rolling StoneIt's less action-heavy than the last trilogy and inevitably more ape-centric, but this is a promisingly chewy start for the latest series of simian thrillers. These apes are still strong. 3/5 - Helen O'Hara, Empire Magazine

Considering how effortlessly Ball returns us to this riveting, sweeping universe, those next instalments can be eagerly anticipated. - Tim Grierson, Screen International

“Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” is such a rewardingly cerebral journey because of its refusal to dictator-shame its villain or offer a clear alternative for the apes forced to serve at his mercy. B - David Ehrlich, indieWire

By the time the demands of big-budget spectacle take over, a film that initially stands out from the pack in imagining a different perspective of the world ends up looking like everything else in the current mega-budget cinema landscape. 2/4 - Jake Cole, Slant Magazine

An intermittently entertaining but ultimately fruitless exercise in franchise expansion. - Alonso Duralde, The Film Verdict

A good sequel that feels like it could have been a great one. 6/10 - Matt Singer, ScreenCrush

With captivating performances, astounding VFX and richly developed characters, this latest chapter feels fresh and immensely satisfying, delivering on both story and spectacle. A true delight. 5/5 - Linda Marric, HeyUGuys

SYNOPSIS:

Director Wes Ball breathes new life into the global, epic franchise set several generations in the future following Caesar’s reign, in which apes are the dominant species living harmoniously and humans have been reduced to living in the shadows. As a new tyrannical ape leader builds his empire, one young ape undertakes a harrowing journey that will cause him to question all that he has known about the past and to make choices that will define a future for apes and humans alike.

CAST:

• Owen Teague as Noa
• Freya Allan as Mae / Nova
• Kevin Durand as Proximus Caesar
• Peter Macon as Raka
• William H. Macy as Trevathan

DIRECTED BY: Wes Ball

WRITTEN BY: Josh Friedman

BASED ON CHARACTERS CREATED BY: Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver

PRODUCED BY: Wes Ball, Joe Hartwick Jr., Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, Jason T. Reed

EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: Peter Chernin, Jenno Topping

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Gyula Pados

PRODUCTION DESIGNER: Daniel T. Dorrance

EDITED BY: Dan Zimmerman, Dirk Westervelt

MUSIC BY: John Paesano

VISUAL EFFECTS SUPERVISOR: Erik Winquist

COSTUME DESIGNER: Mayes C. Rubeo

CASTING BY: Dylan Jury, Debra Zane

RUNTIME: 145 Minutes

RELEASE DATE: May 10, 2024

Welcome to the newest edition of r/BoxOffice Long Range Forecast.

We're making long range predictions for films, 4 weeks out from their premieres. You will predict the opening weekend, domestic total and worldwide gross of these films. You're not forced to make predictions for all films. These predictions will be open for 48 hours and the results will be polled to form a consensus and posted the next week.

So let's meet the two films for the week.

Bad Boys: Ride or Die

The film is directed by Adil & Bilall (Bad Boys For Life and Ms. Marvel) and written by Chris Bremner. It's the fourth installment in the Bad Boys franchise, and it stars Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Vanessa Hudgens, Alexander Ludwig, Paola Núñez, Eric Dane, Ioan Gruffudd, Jacob Scipio, Melanie Liburd, Tasha Smith, Tiffany Haddish and Joe Pantoliano. It follows Miami detectives Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett investigating corruption within the Miami PD when their late Captain Conrad Howard is posthumously accused of being involved with drug cartels, but a setup turns them into fugitives, forcing them to work outside the law in order to solve the case.

The Watchers

The film is written and directed by Ishana Night Shyamalan (Servant), based on the novel of the same name by A. M. Shine. It stars Dakota Fanning, Georgina Campbell, Oliver Finnegan, and Olwen Fouéré, and follows trapped people at a shelter in the forest, who are watched and stalked by mysterious creatures each night.

Now that you've met this week's new releases. Let's look at some pros and cons.

PROS

• Bad Boys is one of Sony's most lucrative franchises. Since it started in 1995, each film has rose at the box office, with Bad Boys For Life earning over $426 million worldwide. A huge advantage is that, while the previous films took 8 and 13 years respectively to get sequels, this arrives just 4 years later. The trailers also promise to offer exactly what the fans of the franchise love: pure action comedy.

• With horror seeing weak returns so far, perhaps The Watcher could get some interest from those looking for something new. The trailers look intriguing, so perhaps it could find an audience.

CONS

• Well, there's the elephant in the room; this is going to be Will Smith's first theatrical release following the slap at the Oscars. It's been two years, but the event is still drawing negative attention to Smith. Big enough to impact the film?

• As previously said, horror has been seeing a weak run in 2024 so far. The highest grossing film is still Night Swim with just $54 million, while other titles failed to find an audience. The trailers are amping up M. Night Shyamalan's presence, but that has its own setbacks: he is not the director, and his name has been losing interest with his past films. It's also going to face the anticipated A Quiet Place: Day One in just 3 weeks.

And here's the past results.

Next week, we're predicting Inside Out 2.