‘Thirteen Lives’: Ron Howard MGM Movie Heads To Awards Season After Record Test Scores For Studio

‘Thirteen Lives’: Ron Howard MGM Movie Heads To Awards Season After Record Test Scores For Studio

EXCLUSIVE: After notching, what I hear, is the best test scores in MGM history, Ron Howard’s Thai cave rescue movie Thirteen Lives is moving from Easter weekend this year, April 15-17 to Friday, Nov. 18 into the aorta of awards season.


The movie, scripted by 2x Oscar nominated screenwriter William Nicholson, is the type of movie that needs a lot of buzz, and I hear the studio will be screening it plenty come the fall. Thirteen Lives earned a 97 in the top two boxes and an 86 definite recommend. MGM and UAR showed off footage from Thirteen Lives at CinemaCon last August.


Thirteen Lives‘ logline: A rescue mission is assembled in Thailand where a group of young boys and their soccer coach are trapped in a system of underground caves that are flooding. Colin Farrell, Viggo Mortensen, and Joel Edgerton star. Pic is produced by William M. Connor, Brian Grazer, Karen Lunder, Gabrielle Tana and P.J. van Sandwijk.

MGM via its distribution and marketing arm United Artists Releasing can boast the highest grossing drama during the pandemic, that being Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci with over $52M domestic and close to $129M WW. The movie is up for three SAG noms including Best Actress Lady Gaga, Best Supporting Actor Jared Leto and Best Ensemble.


Say what you will about adults not coming back to the cinema during the pandemic, but Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza is also holding very well (around -28% average throughout seven weekends, excluding its expansion during a nine-weekend run), seeing $10.78M domestic, ahead of the filmmaker’s pervious 1970s LA-set movie, Inherent Vice, which made $8.1M.


Next up for UAR is the Channing Tatum movie Dog on Feb. 18 and the Joe Wright-directed musical Cyrano on Feb. 25.