Box Office: ‘Aquaman’ tops $600 million as it aims for $1 billion worldwide

With $596 million worldwide as of Wednesday, it is all but certain that ‘Aquaman’ will top $600m worldwide by the end of this sentence. The DC Films flick earned another $16.9m in North America and $20m overseas on Wednesday, which is a mere 23% drop from its $22m Christmas Day gross. The James Wan-directed adventure […]

With $596 million worldwide as of Wednesday, it is all but certain that ‘Aquaman’ will top $600m worldwide by the end of this sentence. The DC Films flick earned another $16.9m in North America and $20m overseas on Wednesday, which is a mere 23% drop from its $22m Christmas Day gross. The James Wan-directed adventure has earned $122.615m domestic in six days and should close out its first week with around $137m. The big question is whether its decent reviews and relatively positive word-of-mouth, which includes quite a bit of “Huh… that was better than I expected!” feedback (always good for legs), will mean a second-weekend drop closer to ‘The Force Awakens’ (-40%) than ‘I Am Legend’, Rogue ‘One’, ‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’ and ‘The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug’ (all -56% to -58%).

Yes, it will mean more that a movie that opened with $248 million took a mere 40% drop (even if it had the good fortune of Christmas Day falling on its second Friday) as opposed to a movie dropping 40% during Christmas even with a $73m debut weekend. If the Jason Momoa/Amber Heard actioner is able to use the holidays to buffer what otherwise would be a conventional comic book superhero second-weekend-drop, it might hold around as well as ‘Black Panther’ (-44% from a $202m debut in 2018), ‘Wonder Woman’ (-43% from a $103m debut in 2017). A hold like Blade (-36% from a $17m launch in 1998) or ‘Spider-Man’ (-38% from a $114m launch in 2002) would be a pipe dream, or would it?

Thus far, despite opening with $72.7 million in North America (counting the $4.7m in pre-release sneak previews), ‘Aquaman’ has taken day-to-day drops frighteningly close to ‘Jack Reacher’ (which fell 27% on day six) and ‘National Treasure: Book of Secrets’ (which fell 9% on day six). I’m using those as a measuring stick for the moment because they too opened on December 21 when Christmas also fell on a Tuesday. Right now, ‘Aquaman’ has a 1.68x weekend-to-domestic multiplier compared to 1.73x for National Treasure 2 ($77.9m in six days after a $44.7m debut weekend in 2007) and a 1.77x multiplier for Jack Reacher ($26.9m after a $15.2m debut in 2012). Actually, if you remove the pre-release preview showings and count Aquaman’s opening as $68m (which you shouldn’t, but humor me for a moment), you get a multiplier pretty much equal (1.8x) to the respective super-leggy Christmas releases.

I’m not expecting a second-weekend drop comparable to Jack Reacher (-10.6%) or Book of Secrets (-20%), but I won’t be shocked if it’s closer to Force Awakens or Return of the King than Rogue One or Desolation of Smaug. Whether you think Aquaman is a dynamite IMAX-friendly entertainment, merely better than Justice League or Suicide Squad (or worth it just to ogle Momoa and/or Heard), it is positioned as the official fantasy adventure event movie of the season, the closest thing we have this season to Star Wars, Avatar or Middle Earth adventure (it even briefly turns into ‘National Treasure’ in its second act). With ‘Mary Poppins Returns’ safely dispatched via an ill-advised move to December 19 (Disney really should have kept that Christmas Day opening), it’ll have three weeks of calm seas before M. Night Shyamalan’s Glass.

Source: Forbes