Alita: Battle Angel Wins a Slow Weekend at the Box Office
by EG
Alita: Battle Angel outperformed expectations and won the box-office race this weekend, but there's still plenty of bad news for the movie. First of all, it won a particularly slow weekend at theaters, and the movie cost so much to make that one modest weekend win will likely not be enough to save it from financial disaster. Read on for details.
Director Robert Rodriguez's Alita: Battle Angel easily won the long Presidents Day holiday with a less than heavenly $43 million, including $34.3 million for the four-day weekend proper.
The good news: Alita — a passion project for James Cameron, who produced and co-wrote — came in well ahead of prerelease tracking thanks to strong word of mouth. Throughout the weekend, the male-fueled pic gained momentum. The bad: The long-gestating cyberpunk adventure cost 20th Century Fox at least $200 million to produce before tax rebates and incentives brought the net budget down to $165 million-$170 million (this doesn't include marketing).
Alita will need to have strong legs domestically and do huge business overseas if it isn't to lose tens of millions and become the first big-budget miss of the year. The film earned $56 million from 86 foreign markets over the weekend for an early offshore total of $94.3 million and roughly $137.3 million globally through Monday. So far overseas, Alita is pacing ahead of Ready Player One, which earned $455.2 million internationally.
Japan and China, where the pic will open Friday, will be key (Cameron is set to attend Monday's premiere in China). Alita was the top-grossing film of the weekend overseas, save for in China, where sci-fi sensation The Wandering Earth, which earned another $96.9 million for a total $609.2 million.
Get the rest of the story at The Hollywood Reporter.
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