‘Now You See Me’ Makes Magic With $75.5M Global Debut, ‘One Battle’ Tops $200M & ‘Demon Slayer’ Storms China To Reach $730M WW – International Box Office
Refresh for latest…: Lionsgate’s third outing with the Four Horsemen conjured a $75.5M global opening this weekend. Of that, $54.2M was in 64 international box office markets.
The magic extended to No. 1s in 40 of those offshore hubs, including a surprisingly solid China start of $21.7M, according to Maoyan, where Leomus handles. Next best was CIS (Pasatiempo) at $6.4M (and, yes, Lionsgate still third-party releases movies in Russia via its longstanding output deals).
I’m told that Latin America grossed $5.5M as a region (awaiting a breakdown). Korea, via Lotte did $3.9M, France (SND) $3.5M and UK (Lionsgate UK) $3.2M.
The other major opener, Paramount’s The Running Man, got off to an $11.2M start overseas in 58 markets (including previews). The global debut was $28.2M.
This opening frame of the Glen Powell-starrer reps 65% of international. France, Brazil and Spain release next week, followed by Korea on December 4, China December 5 and Japan on January 30.
The top opener was the UK at No. 2 with $3.3M, then Germany at No. 3 with $1.1M, Australia (No. 2/$1M), Mexico (No. 3/$659K) and the UAE (No. 1/$391K).
Last week’s champ, 20th/Disney’s Predator: Badlands, added $16.1M overseas to bring the international box office cume to $70M. Globally, the total is now $136.3M to make it the 3rd biggest of the franchise at current rates and excluding Russia.
Offshore, it’s the 2nd best of the series. The international drop was 54% excluding China where it nevertheless held well during the midweek.
The Top 5 markets to date are: China ($12.7M), UK ($5.6M), Mexico ($4M), France ($3.7M) and Japan ($3.3M).
Meanwhile, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle was finally unleashed in China where it grossed 373 RMB ($52.5M), per Maoyan.
In the market, the Imax cume was $12.3M, good for 24% of the nationwide total. Distributed by Maoyan locally, the Japanese anime juggernaut delivered the highest Imax opening weekend box office gross, attendance and indexing ever for a Japanese title in China. It also notched the second biggest Imax debut for an animated film ever in China, behind only Ne Zha 2.
Overall, Demon Slayer. has a Sony cume of $349.5M worldwide.
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