Refresh for latest…: Warner Bros/Legendary’s Dune has surpassed expectations, harvesting $36.8M at the international box office from just 24 markets in early release. The Denis Villeneuve-directed sci-fi epic was the top movie overseas this weekend, coming in with No. 1s in virtually all openings. In like–for-likes and at today’s rates, Dune is tracking 4% ahead of Tenet, 33% ahead of Black Widow, 52% ahead of Blade Runner 2049, 58% above Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings and 80% ahead of Godzilla Vs Kong.
IMAX delivered a fantastic $3.6M from 142 screens representing roughly 10% of the total weekend and a $25K per-screen average. Dune demolished pandemic-era box office records for the network in 10 markets including Russia, France, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Norway, Sweden and Ukraine, as well as Hong Kong and Singapore.
Overall, this is a great result for the adaptation of Frank Herbert’s world-building 1965 classic novel — and this is only the beginning. Industry projections had Dune seeing a $20M+ launch. Ultimately, Russia and France were neck-and-neck as the best plays with the former debuting to $7.6M and the latter at $7.5M. Germany ($4.9M), Italy ($2.6M) and Spain ($2.2M) round out the Top 5.
Dune world premiered at the Venice Film Festival, before moving to Paris for a special event screening at the Grand Rex cinema, a showing at the Deauville American Film Festival and a berth at Toronto.
Dune hits Middle East markets on September 22 with Japan and some other Asian and EMEA markets on October 15, followed by Korea, the UK, some smaller Euro markets and all of Latin America during the October 20 frame — in line with domestic. Australia, given the state of cinema closures there, is currently dated December 2.
Meanwhile, Disney/Marvel’s Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings led global play with $42M in the third session. Of that, $20.3M comes from 43 material offshore markets. The total international cume is now $143.7M for $320.6M global. The latter figure makes it the No. 4 biggest Hollywood title of 2021. It held No. 1s in Australia, Brazil, Mexico and the UK among others this frame. The total overseas drop was 44%.
The UK leads all play on Shang-Chi with $21.8M, followed by Korea ($12.6M), France ($9.2M), Russia ($7.6M) and Japan ($7M). There is still no word of a China date — given the recent confirmation that both Dune and James Bond pic No Time To Die are releasing there in late October, it remains dubious if Shang-Chi will be approved.
Also from Disney, 20th Century Studios’ Free Guy continues to enjoy a strong run in China having grossed $85.6M after 24 days. It lagged some local titles in the market this session with Cloudy Mountain taking the lead at about $19M. The full offshore weekend on Free Guy was $8.4M for a $189.7M intnernational cume. Globally, the Ryan Reynolds-starrer is about to cross $300M, currently sitting at $298.3M.
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