There have been some surprise numbers coming out of the box office in the last few months. There has been quite a bit of uncertainty due to the Delta Variant spreading across the world, but the domestic box office has slowly recovered through theater-only releases beating expectations. Venom: Let There Be Carnage even managed to take the top spot in the box office beating out both Black Widow and Shang-Chi. Now, it seems the last Daniel-Craig-led James Bond film is on track to outperform its previous franchise entries.
Thursday preview numbers are in and the film that once was going to release in April 2020 has garnered around $6.3M. Yes, it’s behind the Venom sequel’s $11.6M and Shang-Chi‘s $8.8M, but it’s a new best for the franchise. This is primarily due to the target audience of the franchise skewing older. It beat out the last entry, Spectre, which opened to around $5.25M and ended up earning $70M in its domestic launch. So, there’s a good chance the film will end up at around $84M once the weekend is over.
Now, these numbers are quite different from the previous report. CNBC predicted that the film would become 2021’s first $100M domestic opening. While it’s looking good that the film will pass $150M worldwide, it’s still an impressive start for the franchise. F9 had a strong showing in its Thursday previews but ended with $70M when it was released. So, it’ll be interesting to see where exactly this latest entry ends up.
Source: Forbes
