It has been nearly three weeks since Ultraviolet came out — that’s the longest we have gone so far this year without a new major theatrical release that had not been screened for critics in advance — so the studios are apparently making up for this by releasing two films this week without any sneak previews.
The Hollywood Reporter says Stay Alive and Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector were not screened for the media even though they both stand a very good chance of landing in the weekend’s top ten.
One extra but not entirely unprecedented wrinkle this time is that Health Inspector does not appear to be opening in Canada at all, even though it is distributed by Canadian-owned Lionsgate.
It thus just might be the first film in years, if not ever, to open in the top ten without Canadian distribution that was not targetting a specifically African-American (or, in the industry parlance, “urban”) demographic or a specifically Christian demographic (like 1999’s The Omega Code or this year’s End of the Spear).
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