Barbie’s four-week reign at the top of the US box office comes to an end with the debut of DC’s newest superhero movie, “Blue Beetle,” with $25.4M.
After a record-setting run that left movie theaters colored pink for a month, Barbie came in at No. 2 with $21.5M. Warner Bros’s top-grossing movie of all time stands at a domestic total of $567M and a worldwide cume of $1.279 billion.
The latest DC superhero adventure may have taken the top spot, but its opening weekend was less successful than anticipated. In 63 markets, “Blue Beetle,” starring Latino protagonist Xolo Mariduea as the alien symbiote, earned $18 million at the global box office. With $43 million worldwide, it has one of the worst debuts in the DC Cinematic Universe’s history.
Blue Beetle will need to beat the box office odds to justify its price tag because it cost more than $100 million to develop and many more millions to promote. The movie has a “B+” CinemaScore and a 77% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but word of mouth and reviews might not be enough to fill theaters. Reportedly Blue Beetle has also been hampered by the SAG-AFTRA strike, which negotiated Soto’s cast participation in the publicity tour.
After “The Flash” ($55 million in June) and “Shazam: Fury of the Gods” ($30.1 million in March), Blue Beetle is the third DC movie to launch poorly in 2023. Even “The Suicide Squad,” which was released concurrently in theatres and on HBO Max in 2021, had a better opening weekend with $26.2 million. But in comparison to Blue Beetle, those films were based on more well-known characters, which bombed at the box office.
Nolan’s Oppenheimer stands in the third position
In its fifth weekend of release, Oppenheimer came in third with $11 million, increasing total ticket sales to $286 million. The R-rated historical drama surpassed 2014’s “Interstellar” ($714 million) at the box office over the weekend to surpass $700 million worldwide and become Nolan’s fourth-highest-grossing film. The fourth-largest release of the year, it earned $845 million, trailing only ‘The Super Mario Bros. Movie’ ($1.35 billion), ‘Barbie’ ($1.27 billion), and ‘Guardians of The Galaxy Vol. 3’ ($1.27 billion).
Paramount’s animated comedy makes $8.4 million
With $8.4 million from 3,477 locations, Paramount’s ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem’ came in at No. 4. The animated family comedy has made $88.1 million in North America and $30 million elsewhere after three weeks in theatres. It will end up having a small box office haul while costing $70 million.
Strays disappointing 6th position
In its opening weekend, Universal’s talking-dog comedy “Strays” similarly struggled, earning a pitiful $8.3 million from 3,223 theatres to finish sixth. The R-rated film cost $46 million, but it might have trouble in foreign markets because comedies generally don’t catch on there. With $1.9 million from 21 different countries, it underperformed at the foreign box office, bringing in a total of $10 million worldwide.
