It has been a sluggish weekend at box offices across the country, as Pacific Rim: Uprising lead ticket sales for the weekend taking in a rather underwhelming $26.2 million. But that amount was still big enough to dislodge Black Panther from the number one spot on the box office charts where it had reigned for the last five weekends since it’s debut in February.
While $26.2 million in ticket sales is a bit low for a high-price film like Pacific Rim: Uprising, Universal should be able to rely to on the film’s foreign box office to help meet its $155 million production cost. The film is opening in 62 overseas territories and early estimates are putting this weekend’s grosses at approximately $120.5 million. Not surprisingly, the biggest chunk of that is coming from China, with $65 million being taken in.
The original Pacific Rim film had a similar performance vector, doing only moderate business in the states with a bulk of its foreign gross coming from China. It was the Chinese box office receipts that pushed the accounting on the film into the territory where a sequel seemed like a financially good idea. The original film grossed a total of $155 million in China in 2013 and the appetite for Hollywood product in Chinese theaters has grown much since then.
Meanwhile, with its demotion to the number two spot on the box office rankings, Black Panther‘s $16.6 million gives the film a total domestic box office take of $630.9 million, making it the highest domestic grossing superhero film of all time, beating out Marvel Studios’ The Avengers, which had topped out at $623.3 million when it was released in 2012. But Black Panther may not hold onto that number one spot for long, with the excitement building for next month’s The Avengers: Infinity War.
