Another good sign of the revival of movie distribution was evident last weekend. Immediately, two new, presumably box office, films opened in North America (USA and Canada together) exceeding 15 million dollars in fees each. According to the current, “modern” times, this number is considered to be a milestone for success. Adaptation of the popular video game Warner Bros. with the typically Russian name Mortal Kombat (this is not a joke, this is how Mortal Kombat was released in Russia) took first place, collecting 22.5 million dollars in 3,073 theaters. In second place is a Japanese cartoon
Demon Slayer -Kimetsu no Yaiba- The Movie: Mugen Train, which exceeded expectations and collected $19.5 million in its debut.
According to estimates, this weekend could become the most profitable during the pandemic in North America – with a total of more than 50 million dollars. Screenings in large-screen Imax theaters accounted for 11 percent of Mortal Kombat’s total domestic revenue of $2.5 million. And this despite the fact that the picture could be watched (for a lot of money) on the HBO Max streaming platform. The film added $6.3 million to its pocket in 36 countries and brought its total overseas to $27.6 million. Australia collected $3.2 million, Russia, where the film debuted three weeks earlier than anywhere else in the world, was the second most successful country for the film with $10.2 million after three weeks of release. It has already collected $50.1 million worldwide. The UK joins the screenings on May 17, Brazil on May 20 and Japan on June 18.
Meanwhile, studio Warner Bros. set an “epidemic record” when her Godzilla vs. Kong picture crossed the $400 million mark. The film took third place this weekend domestically with $4.2 million from 2,856 screens and added $5.7 million in 41 foreign countries. The collection has now reached a total of $86.6 domestic and $320 million overseas for a worldwide box office of $406.6. The leading “money collectors” are China ($183.1 million), followed by North America (US and Canada, $86.6 million), Australia ($20.1 million), Mexico ($18.2 million) and Taiwan ($12.4 million).
This review is being written when literally an hour ago, the ceremony of awarding the Oscars for achievements in the field of cinematography for the period of 2020-2021, which was extended due to the pandemic, ended.
Before the ceremony, which took place on April 25, films nominated for “Oscar” in various categories, which demonstrated a significant increase in interest from the already small audience. It will be interesting to see if there will be any surge at all in interest in the winners still going to the movies.
But here it should be noted that many of the nominated films, such as the most nominated Mank from Netflix, were shown only on streaming services, and a number of others, such as The Father, were simultaneously shown in cinemas and for considerable money on platforms that do not publish data on the financial results of such impressions. So any open financial data is essentially quite relative. As, however, and everything in these strange times.