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The reign of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” atop the box office charts has come to an end with Warner Bros./DC’s “Blue Beetle” taking the top spot at the box office, but that’s not much help for the new superhero film as it opens below prerelease projections with an estimated $25 million opening weekend from 3,871 locations.
Prior to release, “Blue Beetle” was projected for an opening weekend of $28-32 million from 3,871 locations, but barring a larger than expected walk-up surge, it won’t get there as the film earned an opening day total of $10 million, including $3.3 million from Thursday previews.
This wouldn’t be so bad if audience reception scores were stellar and suggested a strong possibility that word-of-mouth could help “Blue Beetle” leg out, but that’s not quite the case.
While the film’s Rotten Tomatoes scores are generally positive at 76% critics and 92% audience, “Blue Beetle” has earned a B+ on CinemaScore, same as what the ill-fated “Shazam!: Fury of the Gods” earned last spring. PostTrak scores are slightly better with 4/5 among general audiences and 5/5 among families, compared to 3.5/5 and 4.5/5 in those respective groups for “Shazam 2”
The data suggests that the movie might have strong buzz among some families and among Latino moviegoers — the latter group over-indexed with 40% of the opening day audience — but with a production spend reported to be at least $104 million before marketing, “Blue Beetle” needs buzz across demographics to truly leg out against its budget level.
Universal’s “Strays” is doing even worse at the box office with an opening of just $8.5 million from 3,223 theaters, falling short of projections for an opening weekend in the low teens and short of what is needed for a film with a reported $46 million production budget.
The R-rated comedy about a group of stray dogs got mixed reviews from critics with a 54% RT score and only mildly positive returns from audiences with a B+ on CinemaScore. The film’s opening may fall short of the third weekend of Paramount’s “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem,” which is currently estimated in the $8-9 million range as its domestic total reaches $88.5 million.
For Warner Bros. and Universal, the rough starts to these new releases will be eased by the continued success of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” which both have passed big milestones for their respective studios.
“Barbie,” which now has an estimated $566 million domestic total after five weekends, has passed “The Dark Knight” to become Warner Bros.’ highest grossing domestic release before inflation adjustment. This coming week, it will pass “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” to become the top domestic film of 2023, having also passed $1.2 billion worldwide earlier this week.
“Oppenheimer,” meanwhile, will pass $700 million at the global box office this weekend, and in doing so will also pass the global total of “Fast X” to become the fourth highest grossing film of 2023.
That’s not something Universal was expecting when they agreed to produce Christopher Nolan’s biopic, as studio insiders told TheWrap that the $525 million global total of Nolan’s 2017 film “Dunkirk” was their metric of success. But Nolan’s global fanbase combined with the can’t-miss aura surrounding its Imax release have pushed it to levels rarely seen for films that aren’t based on preexisting IP.
