The first big movie of 2019 looks to be M. Night Shyamalan’s Glass, which is the sequel to Unbreakable and Split.
Glass is set to open Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend with its four-day haul projected at $75 million. Deadline does note other tracking services have the movie debuting around $50 million.
What Glass has going for it that its previous movie, Split, did not is that now audiences know it is related to Unbreakable. Split wasn’t advertised as a sequel to 2000’s Unbreakable, but only when Bruce Willis was revealed at the end, did fans make the connection. Of course, having Willis and Samuel L. Jackson back certainly isn’t hurting things. Split opened to around $40 million in 2017.
If the $75 million number holds, it will give Glass the second best MLK weekend opening following Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper ($107.2 million) from 2015.
Glass opens January 18, 2019 also starring Anya Taylor-Joy.
Synopsis:
M. Night Shyamalan brings together the narratives of two of his standout originals—2000’s Unbreakable, from Touchstone, and 2016’s Split, from Universal—in one explosive, all-new comic-book thriller: Glass.
From Unbreakable, Bruce Willis returns as David Dunn as does Samuel L. Jackson as Elijah Price, known also by his pseudonym Mr. Glass. Joining from Split are James McAvoy, reprising his role as Kevin Wendell Crumb and the multiple identities who reside within, and Anya Taylor-Joy as Casey Cooke, the only captive to survive an encounter with The Beast.
Following the conclusion of Split, Glass finds Dunn pursuing Crumb’s superhuman figure of The Beast in a series of escalating encounters, while the shadowy presence of Price emerges as an orchestrator who holds secrets critical to both men.
Joining the all-star cast are Unbreakable’s Spencer Treat Clark and Charlayne Woodard, who reprise their roles as Dunn’s son and Price’s mother, as well as Golden Globe Award winner Sarah Paulson (American Horror Story series).
This riveting culmination of his worldwide blockbusters is produced by Shyamalan and Blumhouse Production’s Jason Blum, who also produced the writer/director’s previous two films for Universal. They produce again with Ashwin Rajan and Marc Bienstock, and Steven Schneider and Kevin Frakes, who executive produce. Gary Barber and Roger Birnbaum also serve as executive producers.
A Blinding Edge Pictures and Blumhouse production, Glass will be released by Universal Pictures in North America on January 18, 2019, and by Buena Vista International abroad.
