'Luca' and 'Free Guy' signal Hollywood’s return to China, but does an audience now spoiled rotten by high-quality Chinese tentpoles still give a damn about American blockbusters?
opened with $5.5 million in late 2020 then jumped to $13.8 million in weekend two and legged out to $57 million. Likewise,opened with $17 million in late November 2018 and then earned $44 million in weekend two before earning a record-for-Pixar $189 million.
Granted, $57 million is more likely as a best-case-scenario than $189 million , but we’ll see how that plays out. Opening next week will be Ryan Reynolds’, which has earned $60 million worldwide thus far in a non-Covid time would have seemed like a candidate for breakout status. Shawn Levy’s well-reviewed and well-received over/under $115 million original is both deeply immersed in video game culture and heavily influenced by American pop culture.
That wasn’t true before Covid and it’s certainly not true now that a year mostly without Hollywood biggies has only strengthened the industry’s reliance on homegrown tentpoles. Even before the pandemic upended the theatrical industry, the notion of China as Hollywood’s savior was, at best, an illusion. Yes, money is money, but China is better at artificially inflating the global grosses of already successful films.Transformersearned $356 million in China, which was still “only” 17% of its $2.
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