Warner Bros/Legendary’s sci-fi epic Dune is crossing the $300M mark globally today, with North America totaling $71M through Monday and including $228.3M at the international box office.
The Denis Villeneuve-directed world-building movie, based on Frank Herbert’s classic novel, initially debuted at the Venice Film Festival where it garnered strongly positive response. It has been on a staggered opportunistic release pattern since, smartly staying away from No Time To Die and Venom 2, and expanding two frames ago in step with the domestic release. This past weekend saw an offshore drop of 54% (when excluding China that translates to 34%). France boosted 3% during vacation play while other dips were slight in Korea (-14%), Germany (-22%), Brazil (-27%), Japan (-30%), the UK (-32%) and Spain (-35%).
Korea, which has been soft of late, is notable at No. 1 this past frame — as well as on Monday and Tuesday this week, and has cumed $7.6M through Tuesday. Covid restrictions are easing in the market.
China is the lead play with $34M through Tuesday. France through Monday has grossed $29.3M, followed by Russia at $21M, Germany at $20.2M and the UK with $18.8M.
There have been numerous No. 1 openings across the release so far with another four markets to go including Australia on December 2.
Says Jeff Goldstein, President, Warner Bros Pictures Domestic Distribution, “We are so thrilled that this one-of-a-kind cinematic experience has movie lovers, as well as lifelong fans of the book like Denis Villeneuve himself, eager to see Dune as he envisioned it: on the biggest possible screen. These terrific numbers, coupled with A- CinemaScore and a Certified Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, show the film delivers and that audiences are going back for multiple viewings.”
Andrew Cripps, President, Warner Bros Pictures International Distribution, also noted, “From our first international opening in September, we could see that Dune was both a critical and crowd pleaser. The numbers have continued to bear that out as each market has opened and we look forward to a healthy theatrical play, with Australia and New Zealand yet to come as we head into the holidays.”