‘Alien: Romulus’ Carves Out $41.5 Million Box Office Opening
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 2017 Fox-distributed predecessor, “Alien: Covenant.”
That film, directed by series creator Ridley Scott, received mixed-to-positive reviews from critics and longtime fans, but Fede Álvarez’s latest installment has earned a strong reception with a B+ on CinemaScore to go with Rotten Tomatoes scores of 81% from 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, the United Kingdom 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 triumphs 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. Combined, Disney has now accounted for an impressive 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 Marvel Cinematic Universe films “Captain Marvel” and “Spider-Man: Far From Home,” both released in 2019.
“It Ends With Us” is in third place in its second weekend, earning a solid $24 million. That represents a 52% drop for the Blake Lively-starring film 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 this coming week to pass “IF” as the highest-grossing non-sequel so far this year — despite bad press around the film’s marketing, as well as Lively and her behind-the-scenes relationship with Baldoni.
Universal’s ‘Twisters” is in fourth with $9.8 million, continuing the film’s American-driven box office run with $238.4 million domestically. Completing the top five 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 rerelease record for Fathom.
Overall estimates for the weekend stand at $138 million, 37% ahead of the same weekend last year and 14% ahead of 2019 levels. While the summer season as a whole will finish behind last year due to the historically poor performance seen in May, the box office is currently on pace for the highest-grossing August seen since 2016, when “Suicide Squad” boosted grosses above $1 billion for the month.
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