Movie theaters aren’t having a great year so far, all things considered. The spring was tepid at the box office, and Memorial Day weekend saw the lowest box office numbers in 20 years (setting aside 2020 for obvious reasons). And the thing is, there’s no shortage of causes you can blame this on. It’s everything from people being tired of superhero movies to delays caused by the writers’ and actors’ strikes.
That said, the month of July looks at least … a little interesting — that’s the word I’ll use to describe the slate of movies coming to theaters over the next month. There will be more than a few releases, I think, that draw me to the nearest big screen, including everything from mainstream crowd-pleasers to quirky indies.
And here are three of the most anticipated movies of the month to whet your appetite, courtesy of Rotten Tomatoes.
Despicable Me 4 (release date July 3)
In the wake of Inside Out 2‘s super-impressive box office haul — it’s the biggest release of 2024 so far, for crying out loud — Illumination is about to drop its latest installment in the highest-grossing animated franchise of all time.
Despicable Me 4 is actually already out and doing well in several international markets, international being historically receptive to the franchise and helping add tens of millions of dollars to its overall box office pile. In this latest sequel, beloved supervillain Gru is back, alongside his wife and their three daughters: Margo, Edith, and Agnes. New additions include Gru Jr., as well as Gru’s new nemesis Maxime Le Mal (voiced by Will Ferrell), and Maxime’s partner Valentine (voiced by Sofia Vergara).
You can complain about the prevalence of too many sequels in Hollywood, if you want, but at the same time — don’t fix what ain’t broken, right?
MaXXXine (release date July 5)
Next up, we have MaXXXine, the highly anticipated third installment that rounds out Ti West’s acclaimed horror trilogy following X and Pearl.
In the new movie, Mia Goth reprises her role as Maxine Minx, with a story set in the 1980s as she sets out to become an actress in Los Angeles. “In 1980s Hollywood,” A24 says about the movie, “adult film star and aspiring actress Maxine Minx finally gets her big break. But as a mysterious killer stalks the starlets of Hollywood, a trail of blood threatens to reveal her sinister past.”
In addition to Goth, the cast includes Elizabeth Debicki, Moses Sumney, Michelle Monaghan, Bobby Cannavale, Halsey, Lily Collins, Giancarlo Esposito, and Kevin Bacon. “MaXXXine brings the X Saga to a glorious bloody conclusion,” one reviewer raved on X/Twitter. “Ti West brings together the running themes of all 3 films to say something truly valuable about the horror genre’s impact on cinema. Mia Goth’s Maxine Minx reaches icon status here.”
Fly Me to the Moon (release date July 12)
Finally, this Apple TV+ drama about NASA’s historic Apollo 11 moon landing mission boasts a cast that includes Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum, and those names alone should help attract at least some moviegoers.
Loosely based on a true story, Fly Me to the Moon finds Tatum playing the stressed-out launch director who’s facing a difficult task, with the eyes of the whole country expecting to see this mission succeed. As if that wasn’t enough for him, enter Johansson’s character, who’s brought in with a mission of her own. Given that the White House has deemed the moon mission too big to fail, Johansson’s sassy marketing maven Kelly Jones is in charge of staging a fake moon landing as a backup, just in case.
Jones steps up to the job with panache in this hilarious bit of revisionist, out-of-this-world history that I, for one, can’t wait to watch on a big screen.
