Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings opened this past weekend and it performed better than the predicted estimates hitting $75.5 million domestic for the first three days and over $90 million for the full 4-day weekend. Estimates had it at $35 million – $55 million ahead of it’s opening.
I’m not going to run with the narrative all the other media is, that ‘Shang-Chi broke Labor Day Weekend Records’ because that was a given since the previous record holder was 2007’s ‘Halloween’ at $30.6 million. It was always going to break that record. That was a given. The real story is that the movie blasted past the estimates, they were higher than the Labor Day record, anything else is kind of a disservice to what it actually accomplished.
It still came in behind ‘Black Widow’ which had an $80 million domestic opening that does not count the revenue generated from the Disney+ Premier Access release that happened simultaneously. ‘Shang-Chi’ was only released theatrically. For a theatrical release the opening 3-day total puts it above ‘Thor’ at $65.7 million and below ‘Antman and the Wasp’ at $75.8 million. In context, it really didn’t perform all that well for a Marvel film falling 21 out of 25 openings. However, it had distribution and pandemic challenges that all but one of the other films didn’t have.
It does make one wonder how well ‘Black Widow’ would have done if it had only been released theatrically. It’s easy to see why Scarlett Johansson feels she was shorted. This could work against Disney in their case because it’s clear that the unproven character could bring in similar numbers to an established character, when it was only theatrical release. So an established character like Black Widow likely would have performed significantly better.
Internationally the film did $56.2 million, and it has not been released in China yet.
Overall it did about $146.2 million for the four days when you combine global and domestic box office totals.
In the end the real story is that it far outperformed expectations, but the projections set the bar incredibly low to begin with. But all things considered it did okay for a Marvel film.
What do you think? Comment and let us know.
Source: Variety
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