‘The Meg 2’ Beats the Odds at the Chinese Box Office

The top-earning film at the box office this weekend wasn’t “Barbie,” but rather “The Meg 2: The Trench.” The Warner Bros. Discovery/CMC Pictures shark tale earned $142 million worldwide in its global debut, including a robust $53.3 million in China.

That opening weekend was already 11% higher than “Jurassic World Dominion,” 41% above “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” and more than double “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.” It is also higher than the $50 million first weekend posted by “The Meg” in China back in August 2018.

It’s a big deal that “The Meg 2: The Trench” is performing anything like a pre-COVID business-as-usual Hollywood tentpole. The key advantage might be old-fashioned star power.

The earlier Jason Statham/Li Bingbing-led actioner eventually earned $153 million of its $530 million total in the Middle Kingdom. If the sequel, which swaps Li for Wu Jing, legs out accordingly, we could see a $162 million Chinese total.

It could be more frontloaded overall, as the opening weekend was “only” 2.65 times its $20.4 million Friday versus the 3.1 multiplier for its predecessor. However, it is already the (very) rare COVID-era example of a Hollywood tentpole sequel that opened higher in China than its respective predecessor.

Save for “Avatar: The Way of Water,” which opened with $57 million 13 years after its predecessor opened with $40 million (in far more available theaters but during COVID-specific circumstances), that has only happened once since 2019. “Godzilla Vs. Kong” opened in March of 2021 with $69 million, or just above the $66 million launch of “Godzilla: King of the Monsters” in May of 2019.

Hollywood and China team up

“The Meg 2: The Trench” is, like its predecessor, a Chinese and Hollywood co-production. “The Meg,” released in 2018, was actually the first big-budget co-pro to score big bucks in North America and China. Cut to 2023, with years of Hollywood movies performing worse in China compared to pre-COVID times.

The hope was that “The Meg 2,” with both its co-pro status and the presence of a major Chinese movie star, would be treated closer to an actual Chinese tentpole in China than a Hollywood import. Barring insane legs, it’s more likely that the Ben Wheatley-directed sequel will perform akin to a pre-COVID Hollywood biggie. And its status as a co-production means studios will get back around 43% of the box office versus the standard 25%.

From 2017 to 2019, films like “Rampage,” “Mission: Impossible – Fallout,” “Spider-Man: Far from Home,” “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales” and, yes, “The Meg,” might expect $150 million-$200 million in Chinese box office to supplement the rest of the global marketplace. In the years since COVID, that’s no longer remotely a guarantee.

Just this summer, “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” and “The Little Mermaid” both bombed, while “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” is crawling past $50 million in China. “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” among the first MCU movies to play in China following three years of an unofficial soft ban, is a big winner merely because the threequel made about as much ($80 million) as the second installment ($99 million) in Chinese theaters.

“Meg 2” got help from a Chinese movie star

As we’ve seen over the last three years, China’s marketplace has tilted toward local blockbusters like “The Battle at Lake Changjin,” “Wolf Warrior II” and “The Wandering Earth.” All three of those films feature “The Meg 2” co-star Wu Jing, who has become a genuine butts-in-seats Chinese movie star. He’s a well-liked actor who makes already commercial films into even bigger hits.

Whether it can maintain this momentum into the weekend and beyond is a question of the film’s word of mouth and whether the limited bow of Ao Shen’s crime drama “No More Bets” beginning Saturday might put a damper on the Hollywood-skewing biggie. The local film has thus far earned $99.8 million in four days, with its wide release moved up to Tuesday. It has already passed the current $64.4 million five-day total for “The Meg 2: The Trench.”

Weirdly enough, this follows the pattern at the Chinese box office going back to pre-COVID days, whereby a seemingly surefire sequel (“Wandering Earth 2,” “Monster Hunt 2,” “Detective Chinatown 3,” etc.) gets overshadowed by a less surefire non-sequel (“Full River Red,” “Operation Red Sea,” “Hi, Mom”).

Still, even a frontloaded run will give “The Meg 2: The Trench” a likely $100 million-plus Chinese finish, which is money most of its Tinseltown competition won’t have this summer.

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