READY PLAYER ONE Skyrockets To A $181.2M Worldwide Opening; BLACK PANTHER Tops $650M Domestic
Thanks to the biggest opening for a Warner Bros. film ever in China, Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One is off to a pretty spectacular start worldwide. Plus, Marvel's Black Panther continues its reign!
Following yesterday's update about the domestic box office, we've now received the international numbers and it looks like Steven Spielberg's Ready Player One is off to an even better start than we initially thought.
Domestically, the Spielberg-helmed blockbuster has earned $41.2 million over the three-day weekend, giving it the Easter holiday's biggest opening ever for a non-sequel. Its current four-day domestic haul stands at just over $53.2 million, after opening a day early on Thursday to take advantage of the holiday weekend, which seems to have paid off.
Overseas, Ready Player One skyrocketed to a promising $128 million start, with approximately $61.7 million coming in from China. This makes it the biggest opening weekend for a Warner Bros. film ever in the Middle Kingdom, taking over the record previously held by Zack Snyder's critically-reviled Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which opened to $57 million there in 2016.
The film's current worldwide collection stands at approximately $181.2 million, which is a pretty promising start for a film with a pretty massive $175 million production budget (not including P&A). According to Deadline, Ready Player One will need approximately $440 million to breakeven before counting participations, residuals and interest, which seems more than doable in a fairly uncompetitive April as the entirety of Hollywood await the arrival of Marvel's Avengers: Infinity War.
Meanwhile, Marvel's latest juggernaut, Black Panther, has reached another impressive milestone, topping the $650 million mark at the domestic box office and is inching closer to passing Jurassic World ($652.2M) and Titanic (659.3M) to become the third-highest grossing film ever domestically. Internationally, the Ryan Coogler-helmed feature has grossed over $623.2 million and its current worldwide cume now stands at well over $1.273 billion, making it the third-highest grossing film in the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe and the eleventh-highest grossing film of all-time - and it should crack the top ten relatively soon as it nears Disney's Frozen ($1.276M).
So, what did you guys think of Ready Player One? Sound off with your thoughts below!
The film is set in 2045, with the world on the brink of chaos and collapse. But the people have found salvation in the OASIS, an expansive virtual reality universe created by the brilliant and eccentric James Halliday (Mark Rylance). When Halliday dies, he leaves his immense fortune to the first person to find a digital Easter egg he has hidden somewhere in the OASIS, sparking a contest that grips the entire world. When an unlikely young hero named Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan) decides to join the contest, he is hurled into a breakneck, reality-bending treasure hunt through a fantastical universe of mystery, discovery and danger.
Ready Player One features:
Director: Steven Spielberg
Tye Sheridan as Wade Owen Watts/Parzival
Olivia Cooke as Samantha "Sam" Cook/Art3mis
Ben Mendelsohn as Nolan Sorrento/Sorrento
Simon Pegg as Ogden "Og" Morrow
Mark Rylance as James Donovan Halliday/Anorak
Lena Waithe as Helen Harris/Aech
Win Morisaki as Toshiro Yoshiaki/Daito
Philip Zhao as Akihide Karatsu/Shoto
Hannah John-Kamen as F'Nale Zandor
T.J. Miller as iR0k
Ralph Ineson as Rick
Letitia Wright as Reb
Mckenna Grace as a student
Ready Player One logs into the OASIS on March 29