Box Office: 'Shang-Chi' Tops $200M As Divide Grows Between Hits And Flops
Walt Disney and Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings has passed $200 million domestic thanks to a $780,000 Thursday gross, which is just -19% from its previous Thursday. And, yeah, that’s even more impressive considering the $11.6 million-worth of moviegoers who showed up for Venom: Let There Be Carnage last night. So, yes, as Disney and Scarlett Johansson announce that they have reached a brokered peace (90% of civil cases settle before trial, and this was no exception) and Disney announces that Shang-Chi will arrive on “electronic sell-through” on November 12 (the same day it arrives “for free” on Disney+) and on physical media November 30 (pretty close to a standard 90-day “window”), we finally got a “pandemic-era” $200 million-plus domestic grosser.
We haven’t had a Hollywood flick passing $200 million in North America since Will Smith and Martin Lawrence’s Bad Boys For Life, whose $204 million total (from January 2020) Shang-Chi should pass on Saturday. Conventional wisdom suggests a $7 million fifth-weekend gross for a $207 million 31-day total. Shang-Chi is already the biggest domestic earner of 2021, having passed Marvel’s Black Widow ($183 million) a week ago. It’ll soon be the biggest domestic earner of 2020 and 2021. Its sky-high success, alongside Venom: Let There Be Carnage’s incredibly promising $11.6 million Thursday gross, goes to what I’ve frankly been saying since Memorial Day weekend. The movies that audiences really wanted to see before Covid are performing about as well as expected, at least in North America.
A Quiet Place part II ($160 million), F9 ($173 million), Black Widow ($183 million, plus the concurrent Disney+ revenue) and Shang-Chi ($200 million-and-counting) all arguably earned/will earn around 85% of what might have been expected in non-Covid times. That’s good news for No Time to Die, which could end up closer to Spectre’s $200 million gross than Casino Royale’s $167 million gross, although both would be okay in the long run. It’s good news for the previously surefire likes of Marvel’s Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Marvel’s Eternals and Marvel’s Spider-Man: No Way Home. The question is whether, my current cautious optimism aside, the likes of Dune, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Encanto, Sing 2 and Matrix: Resurrections qualified as surefire hits in a non-Covid world.
Of note, Halloween Kills (playing in theaters and on Peacock starting October 15) could pull grosses on par with M. Night Shyamalan’s Old ($48 million domestic and $90 million worldwide) and still be fine on an over/under $15 million budget. I’d argue the slightly depressed grosses for The Forever Purge, Candyman and Old (all of which were still rock-solid profitable hits, natch) may have played a role in the Halloween Kills Peacock play, but that’s educated speculation. Moreover, as noted earlier this summer, the Covid circumstances have turned conventional and/or cynical franchise plays like (offhand) Space Jam: A New Legacy, The Suicide Squad, Cruella, Jungle Cruise and A Quiet Place Part II and Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins into “everybody’s rooting for you, buddy” underdogs.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/scottmendelson/2021/10/01/box-office-shang-chi-first-pandemic-era-blockbuster-to-top-200m-domestic/?sh=7d889b7f21a0
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