• Box Office

World Box Office May 28 – June 3, 2018

If you look at the box office from a domestic perspective, Solo: A Star Wars Story can claim another victorious week. Not a major victory, actually: it made $29.3 million which means a 66% drop-off from last week and to make a comparison Rogue One: A Star Wars Story on its second week grossed close to $100 million.  Anyway, the Han Solo origins story, with Alden Ehrenreich reinventing the iconic character made famous by Harrison Ford, can still claim the No.1 spot. But look at the box office from a worldwide perspective and it looks like The Force may be actually siding with the Merc with the Mouth. Deadpool 2 has regained the world title, adding a cumulative of $65 million ($23.3 million domestic) against just $60 million for Solo. In its third week of release, Deadpool 2 is about to reach $600 million, a mark Solo may never reach (worldwide total so far: $264 million) although with a production and marketing cost of $400 million that’s the number it will need to enter into profitable territory. Deadpool 2 had its debut in Japan, where it was good for $5.5 million. It was again No.1, for the 3rd week in a row, in Brazil, Mexico, Chile and Taiwan. And it regained the top spot in several countries, including Australia, France, Russia

Whereas Marvel is now considering other ventures for Ryan Reynolds and its uncharacteristic superhero, Disney and Lucasfilm are now reviewing their strategy for the Star Wars franchise. The most common assumption is that they may have launched Solo too close to Star Wars: The Last Jedi, that having let only five months go by may have generated some kind of fatigue for the storied franchise. The new entry has been particularly week internationally, with top markets such as the United Kingdom, China and Germany generating just $18.6 million, $14.7 million and $8.8 million respectively. The only major market left is Japan, scheduled to open at the end of June but starting this week the dinos of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom are about to roar back internationally and that will not help Solo

If Star Wars is turning out to be a headache, there is no reason to panic for Disney. Its other division, Pixar, is about to roll out the Incredibles 2, currently tracking for a domestic box office debut in the range of $140 million. And then there is always the Marvel Universe, with Avengers: Infinity War in its six weeks of release and far from fading away. It picked up an extra $10 million in the US and Canada and $24.3 million internationally. This means the film has reached a worldwide total of $1.96 billion and the $2 billion mark is now a very realistic possibility. $356 million have been generated in China alone. The U.K. generated $94 million, Korea $92.5 million and Brazil $64.9 million.

Back to the domestic market, the No. 3 spot (after Solo and Deadpool 2) went to Baltasar Kormákur’s Adrift, a lost at sea drama starring Shailene Woodley and Sam Claflin: it made $11.5 million in its first weekend. Another debut, Action Point, starring Johnny Knoxville, made just $2.3 million and it may sign the end of the Jackass derived projects. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, represented as some sort of rock star in RBG, keeps drawing strong interest and the documentary is now at the $8 million mark.

See the latest world box office estimates: