Let’s celebrate victories where we can as the domestic box office looks to get on track from the pandemic. It took 12 weekends, but finally Warner Bros./Legendary’s Godzilla vs. Kong crossed $100M at the domestic B.O., becoming the second movie to do so after Paramount’s A Quiet Place Part II which did it in three weekends.
GvK made $250K this past weekend at 512 theaters, -14% from last weekend. The pic, which was part of Warner Bros.’ 2021 dynamic window pandemic strategy, hit the studio’s streaming service HBO Max on March 31, the Wednesday before Easter weekend, and in theaters making $48.1M in its first 5 days. The results were amazing at the time, before LA and NYC were at 100% auditorium capacity, indicating audiences’ urge to return to movie theaters after largely being under lockdown for more than a year.
GvK‘s opening provided plenty of hope to other major studios with event films on the schedule. It was a different situation from what we saw in late August after Warner Bros. opened Tenet (before NYC and theaters were open) to a lackluster $9.3M 3-day: Rival studios spotted that and ripped their films off the schedule, some even sending them to streaming.
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GvK also showed that when a studio spends a great amount of P&A on a film to open at the box office, despite the fact that it’s on streaming simultaneously, people will show up. The question going forward is to what great degree. We’ll see how high Warner Bros. can get with the long-awaited DC sequel The Suicide Squad from director James Gunn on Aug. 6. The first Suicide Squad hold the August opening record with $133.6M.
GvK was on HBO Max for the first 31 days of the movie’s theatrical run, then made exclusive to theaters thereafter before entering into a ancillary home window.