Disney/20th Century’s “Alien: Romulus” is keeping the August box office strong with a $41.5 million opening weekend from 3,885 theaters, topping the $36.1 million opening of its Fox-distributed predecessor, “Alien: Covenant,” in 2017.
That film, directed by series creator Ridley Scott, got a mixed-to-positive reception from critics and longtime fans; but Fede Alvarez’s newest installment has earned strong reception with a B+ on CinemaScore to go with Rotten Tomatoes scores of 81% critics and 87% audience.
“Alien: Romulus” is also seeing strong performance overseas with $66.7 million grossed internationally, led by a stronger-than-expected $25.7 million from China with No. 1 openings in Italy, Spain, UK, and Korea. In like-for-like markets, the film is 47% ahead of “A Quiet Place: Day One,” as its global start reaches $108.2 million.
While “Romulus” did not top the $50 million opening of Sony/Wayfarer’s “It Ends With Us” to give Disney the best opening weekend for each month of the summer season, it is still in line to cap off a resurgent summer for the studio with the billion-dollar successes of Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” and Marvel’s “Deadpool & Wolverine,” along with the more modest success of 20th Century’s “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.”
“Alien Romulus” should turn a profit similar to “Apes,” holding a reported production budget of $80 million. Altogether, Disney has now accounted for a whopping 42% of the domestic summer box office.
“Deadpool & Wolverine,” now the highest grossing R-rated movie of all-time, added $29 million domestically to bring its North American total to $545 million. Globally, the film now stands at $1.14 billion, passing the unadjusted totals for fellow MCU films “Captain Marvel” and “Spider-Man: Far From Home,” both released in 2019.
“It Ends With Us” is in third in its second weekend, earning a solid $24 million. That represents a 52% drop from its opening weekend and gives it a running domestic total of $97.7 million. Justin Baldoni’s adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s hit novel is legging out well with female moviegoers beyond fans of the source material, putting it on pace to pass “IF” as the highest grossing non-sequel so far this year.
Universal’s ‘Twisters” is fourth with $9.8 million, continuing the film’s American-driven box office run with $238.4 million domestic. Completing the top 5 is Fathom Events’ 15th anniversary re-release of Laika Animation’s “Coraline,” which earned $8.4 million this weekend. Including the $2.9 million grossed on Thursday, the stop-motion animated film has earned $11.3 million over four days, setting a new re-release record for Fathom.
More to come…
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