Aneesh Chaganty’s “Searching” was one of the big low-budget success stories of 2018. Made for less than $1 million, the movie stars John Cho as a father desperately trying to find his missing daughter via the power of the internet, and ultimately grossed $75 million at the worldwide box office — 86x its original production budget!
Directed by Nicholas D. Johnson and Will Merrick, the editors of the first movie, “Missing” is a spiritual sequel to “Searching” that flips the dynamic on its head: this time it’s teenager June (Storm Reid) who’s frantically trying to figure out what has happened to her mother, Grace (Nia Long), after she fails to return from a vacation in Colombia. After grossing $3.4 million on Friday (per Deadline), the movie is now looking at a $8.5 million opening weekend. With a reported budget of $7 million, that puts it on track to be another good investment for Sony Pictures.
We’re once again looking at a tightly-grouped box office top five that makes it difficult to predict exactly how the rankings will shake out. While “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” is pretty secure in second place, “A Man Called Otto” and “M3GAN” are both expected to gross around $9 million, which is pretty close to the estimate for “Missing.” No matter how things shake out, though, it’s incredibly encouraging to see so many low- and mid-budget movies at the top of the charts.
On the other end of the budget scale, “Avatar: The Way of Water” is enjoying its sixth consecutive weekend at the top of the box office and expected to add another $17-20 million domestically. With its current worldwide total standing at $1.928 billion, it should hit the $2 billion milestone very soon. Possibly by the time I finish typing this sentence.