'Dragon Ball Super' is a Surprise Hit
by EG
The anime franchise installment Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero performed above expectations over the weekend, taking the top spot at the box office and waking up an otherwise sleeping end-of-summer week. In second place was the Idris Elba thriller Beast, which got a lukewarm reception in theaters. Beyond that, theaters were mostly filled with hold-overs from the summer, as Hollywood waits for the fall movie season to get started. Read on for details.
Via Box Office Mojo.
After five weekends in a row of box-office decline and a gloomy season ahead, this weekend saw a bit of an upswing, led by the latest entry in the hugely popular anime franchise Dragon Ball. The overall box office came in at $72.5 million, up $8.2 million from last weekend, and while this weekend sits among the lowest grossing in recent pre-pandemic years, it was still above expectations and may be the best weekend we see for the next eight weeks.
Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero came in first with a prediction-beating $20.1 million, more than doubling the opening of its predecessor Dragon Ball Super: Broly ($9.8 million) in 2018. Super Hero’s opening is a frontloaded affair, with more than half of the gross coming from Thursday previews and Friday, but it’s hardly something to be let down by given the weekend numbers. Super Hero even broke the nearly 33-year-long dry spell with no anime since Pokémon: The First Movie - Mewtwo Strikes Back opening to number one.
Crunchyroll pulled out all stops for Super Hero, giving it the widest release ever for an anime with 3,900 screens, including IMAX (which made up 16.9% of the domestic gross) and other Premium Large Formats (with the PLFs altogether making up around 40% of the gross). The opening came in just behind that of Demon Slayer the Movie: Mugen Train, which opened to $21.2 million in April 2021. Demon Slayer is a good comp going from here, and that film had a strong domestic cume of $49.5 million, which remains the second biggest for an anime after Pokémon: The First Movie’s $85.7 million. The weekend’s global total from 31 markets is $32 million, adding to the $18 million cume from Japan where the film opened in June.
Second place went to the other newcomer Beast. The Idris Elba starring man vs lion tale didn’t open with much of a roar, bringing in a so-so $11.6 million from 3,743 screens, right in line with expectations but still hard to feel great about given its $36 million budget. Universal’s film won’t become the next big late-summer horror movie, and it fell below the alligator creature-feature comp Crawl, which opened to $12 million in July 2019. That film more than tripled its opening for a $39 million cume, but despite receiving the same B CinemaScore, such legs are unlikely for Beast as it only has two more theatrical exclusive weekends before hitting PVOD. The film brought in an additional $10.3 million from seven international markets.
Bullet Train came in third place with an $8 million third weekend. The 40% drop was the largest in the top ten, and the total is now $69 million. It is still pacing roughly on par with The Lost City, which had a $68.7 million cume after its third weekend and finished with $105 million domestically. Internationally Bullet Train brought in another $12.1 million, down 29% from last weekend, and the global cume is now $150 million. The film releases next weekend in South Korea and Italy, and it opens September 1st in Japan.
Get the rest of the story at Box Office Mojo.