"Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire" smashed its box-office competition last weekend, soaring past expectations with estimated domestic ticket sales of $80 million and delivering the second-best opening of the year, just behind another Warner Bros. and Legendary film, "Dune: Part Two."
Premium formats such as IMAX and Dolby Cinema made up 48% of the film's business. The movie also made $114 in international markets, bringing its global weekend haul to $194 million, according to Warner Bros.
The film ranked an A-minus on CinemaScore, indicating what audiences saw met their expectations. Directed by Adam Wingard from a screenplay credited to Terry Rossio, Simon Barrett and Jeremy Slater, the film did not do as well with critics such as The Los Angeles Times' Katie Walsh, who noted, "There's a harried energy to 'Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire,' which is enjoyable until it becomes tiresome and deafening."
In an interview with The Times' Tracy Brown, Wingard said it was an easy decision to make another film featuring the famous creatures.
"There's nothing as a filmmaker that can prepare you for doing a movie with characters of 6-foot scale and 300-foot scale working together and all the insane mechanics that go along with making a kaiju movie," Wingard said. "I knew that I wasn't done with the series because I knew there were untapped reservoirs of potential in terms of what could be done with monsters."
"It's a cinematic event, and we're seeing these iconic characters doing things we've never seen them do before," said Mary Parent, chairman of worldwide production for Legendary. "There's big swaths of the film that don't have any dialogue, where we put you with the characters; it's a very mythic experience."
The last matchup of the two monsters from Warner Bros. and Legendary, 2021's "Godzilla vs. Kong," had a much smaller opening weekend of $48.5 million, but for a film slowed by the coronavirus pandemic and released simultaneously on HBO Max, it was a serious success that signaled what was to come for the pairing.
"It was a really big number all things considered," Parent said.
The newer film had the second biggest opening of the studios' broader MonsterVerse franchise. "Godzilla" brought in $93.2 million in 2014. It was the biggest earner in the nearly 70-year cinematic history of the creature that originated and spent most of its screen life in Japan. It earned more than $200 million in North America and more than $500 million globally.
"Godzilla x Kong" comes just four months after the most recent Japanese rendition, the critical favorite and Oscar winner "Godzilla Minus One."
But there was clearly no Godzilla glut for audiences, many of whom were willing to pay extra for IMAX and other special formats.
"These are literally two of the biggest movie stars in the world, and you have to see them on the biggest screen possible with the biggest sound possible," said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for data firm Comscore.
"New Empire" was the only new release in the weekend's top five. "Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire," which led the box office two weekends back, came in second place for its second week of release, with an estimated $15.7 million for the weekend and a cumulative total of about $73.4 million, according to Comscore.
"Dune: Part Two" brought in $11.1 million, to push its domestic total in five weeks of release to more than $252 million. The movie's global box office receipts through Sunday rose to $626.1 million, according to Comscore. "Kung Fu Panda 4" made around $10.2 million for a new domestic total of $151.7 million in its fourth week of release.
The original horror film "Immaculate," starring Sydney Sweeney, came in fifth with a weekend estimate of around $3 million, pushing the film's total to $11.1 million after two weeks.
The combination of "Godzilla x Kong," "Dune Part Two" and "Ghostbusters" has put the year to date 6% behind 2023, while it was 20% behind on the eve of the March 1 release of "Dune."
"The industry was feeling pretty glum right before 'Dune Part 2' opened, but they've made up a lot of ground," Dergarabedian said.
The summer is full of titles that are not guaranteed megahits but could break big, including Ryan Gosling's "The Fall Guy" and the next installments of "Planet of the Apes," "Mad Max," "Inside Out" and "Deadpool."
That brings cause for optimism as the theatrical movie business seeks to hang on, though it's highly unlikely it will surpass 2023, which saw "Barbie" surpass $1 billion globally with its release-date mate "Oppenheimer" not far behind.
"'Barbenheimer'" is kind of a once-in-a-lifetime event," Dergarabedian said.