Box Office: ‘Blue Beetle’ Beats ‘Barbie’ With $25.4M Debut, ‘Strays’ Gets Lost
It had to happen sometime. After ruling the box office roost for four weekends, Barbie fell to second place as DC’s superhero pic Blue Beetle took the top spot.
Blue Beetle opened to an estimated $25.4 million in North America. It remains to be seen how much Tropical Storm Hilary dampens grosses in Los Angeles — the film’s top market — and other parts of the Southwest, but Warner Bros. expects the impact to be significant.
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Overseas, the film took in $18 million from 63 markets for a global start of $43.4 million.
It’s understandable why the superhero pic may be feeling a little blue. Not only did Blue Beetle come in behind expectations — heading into the weekend, tracking had suggested $28 million to $32 million — but it also posted one of the lowest openings among any title in the DC Extended Universe, not adjusted for inflation.
Director Ángel Manuel Soto’s Blue Beetle is Hollywood’s first live-action superhero film built around a Latino protagonist and hopes to be a breakthrough movie for Latino audiences and for Latino representation in front of and behind the camera. Xolo Maridueña stars in the titular role opposite Adriana Barraza, Damían Alcázar, Raoul Max Trujillo, Susan Sarandon, George Lopez, Elpidia Carrillo, Bruna Marquezine, Belissa Escobedo, Harvey Guillén and Becky G.
According to exit polling service PostTrak, 39 percent of ticket buyers were Latino (usually, it might be 30 percent). The top 10 theaters were AMC Burbank in L.A., AMC Empire in New York City, Harkins Estrella Falls in Phoenix, the AMC Grove in Los Angeles, AMC Century City in Los Angeles, AMC Puente Hills in Los Angeles, Santikos Casa Blanca in San Antonio, Cinemark Tinseltown in El Paso, Texas, AMC Orange in Los Angeles, and AMC Disney Springs in Orlando.
Blue Beetle’s release has been hampered by the SAG-AFTRA strike, which means Soto’s cast couldn’t participate in the publicity tour. In terms of audience reaction and demo breakdowns, it earned a B+ CinemaScore and played heavily male (66 percent).
Greta Gerwig’s runaway blockbuster Barbie took in $21.5 million for an astounding domestic cume of $567.3 million. It earned another $26 million overseas for a foreign cume of $711.9 million and $1.279 billion globally.
Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, also in its fifth weekend, followed in third place with $10.6 million.
From Universal, Oppenheimer cleared another milestone this weekend when crossing the $700 million mark globally to become Nolan’s fourth-biggest film ever. The film finished Sunday with a domestic total of $285.2 million and a huge $432.6 million overseas for a global total of $717.8 million.
Universal’s raunchy canine comedy Strays had trouble finding its bark in opening to an estimated $8.3 million domestically. That was only good enough for a fifth-place finish behind Paramount’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem in fourth.
Strays, which also earned a B+ CinemaScore, is the latest in a string of R-rated summer comedies to fall flat at the box office. The star-packed voice cast includes Will Ferrell, Jamie Foxx, Isla Fisher, Randall Park and Josh Gad. Similar to Blue Beetle, the pic hasn’t been able to include the voice cast in publicity plans.
Mutant Mayhem, now in its third weekend, earned an estimated $8.4 million for a domestic total of $88.1 million.
Elsewhere, Neon’s highly anticipated rerelease of Park Chan-Wook’s 2003 classic Oldboy grossed an impressive $880,000 from 250 screens in its first five days at the North American box office — which is already ahead of the film’s entire original run, not adjusted for inflation. And it will soon become one of the few rereleases in the last five years to earn $1 million or more after Studio Ghibli titles and James Cameron’s Avatar and Titanic. Top-performing Oldboy theaters included Alamo Drafthouse Cinemas in San Francisco, New York City and Los Angeles.
Aug. 20, 7:30 a.m. Updated with revised estimates.
Aug. 20, 6:30 p.m. Updated with revised estimates.
The original version of this story was published on Aug. 19 at 8:03 a.m.
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