We’ve entered the third Box Office weekend for Black Widow and it’s not looking good for the domestic Box Office overall’s development. M. Night Shyamalan‘s Old took the top spot with a painful $16.5M. It beat out Snake Eyes, which aimed to revive the G.I. Joe franchise. The Henry Golding-led project garnered $13.3M at the Box Office. Even with a smaller budget of $88M, the overall Box Office of the weekend has been rather subpar. Even last week’s top spot holder, Space Jam: A New Legacy, dropped to the fourth spot by 69%. It proves that pandemic releases are extremely frontloaded.
Black Widow held unto the third spot of the domestic Box Office. It even managed to break the pandemic record for passing $150M ahead of F9‘s record. The film did hold surprisingly stated in comparison to its second weekend with a 55% drop. It seems very likely it might pass the latter’s overall domestic Box Office, but worldwide suffering from a limited release. Especially F9‘s dominance in the Chinese movie market is making it this summer’s tentpole release. $215M of its total $621M Box Office was purely in China.
Marvel Studios’ latest entry release in the market remains uncertain. Its Disney+ release has been hurting the film’s potential longevity. But, there have been some similar developments with and without digital releases. The second-week drops have been around 65 to 70% for each film. Space Jam continues the tradition and showcases that repeat viewing is reserved for home. Disney has never released the follow-up numbers for their digital release, but there were hints through third-party analysis that it almost even doubled in its second week.
The lack of transparency is the issue and in comparison to other MCU films, Black Widow is on par with Phase 1 releases. The true test will end up being Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Its September release without a Disney+ Premier Access option may offer a better look at how strong the hold is for an MCU project without the digital influences. Yet, current developments with the Delta Variant may hint at Plus, the current issue with its Chinese release also opens up many questions regarding Marvel’s dependency on foreign Box Office.
Source: Variety, Forbes (BW), Forbes (SE), The Numbers, The Numbers (F9)
