“Project Hail Mary” sets records of Amazon MGM and paved the way for a box office revival.
The science fiction drama, starring Ryan Gosling, has grossed more than $300 million worldwide since it opened in theaters two weeks ago. That marks the best performance for an Amazon MGM film ever.
“The runaway success of ‘Project Hail Mary’ represents a significant turning point for Amazon MGM which gives the retailer its first $100 million plus home office bonus,” said Paul Dergarabedian, Comscore’s head of marketing.
“Project Hail Mary” has been very strong since its debut, with only a 32% drop in ticket sales from its first weekend in the US to its second and almost a 5% decrease in other countries. The average Hollywood blockbuster will see a 50% to 70% drop in ticket sales from opening weekend through the second week after the rush to the theater wears off.
“When Amazon showed off ‘Project Hail Mary’ at CinemaCon last year, it was clear that the studio had big plans in mind,” said Shawn Robbins, director of analytics at Fandango and founder of Box Office Theory. “After two amazing weekends so far, the film is making a big contribution to the year-to-date success.”
Domestically, the film has an income of about $ 165 million, helping to provide the first quarter box office numbers. Disney’s “Hoppers” and Paramount’s “Shout 7.” As of Sunday, the domestic box office has grossed $1.75 billion so far this year, up 23% from the same period last year.
Back in 2022, e-commerce giant Amazon and top movie studio MGM promised to spend about $1 billion every year on game development, an amount that would support between 12 and 15 movies every year. Last year, the company said it had 14 titles ready for 2026.
This increase in theatrical content is exactly what the domestic box office needs. While blockbuster franchise films are still abundant in the wake of the pandemic, the total number of blockbuster releases has declined over the past decade. Even before Covid and two strikes on Hollywood workers slowed production, Hollywood was making fewer movies each year, according to data from Comscore.
At the same time that studios were changing their film slates, movie houses were being consolidated. The latest meeting between The Walt Disney Co. and 21st Century Fox, which was first announced in 2017 and ended in early 2019, caused a loss of between 10 and 15 publications annually, Comscore data shows.
Paramount’s pending merger with The discovery of Warner Bros has Hollywood fearing even fewer theatrical releases.
While Paramount has said it aims to release 15 films from each studio, it’s unclear whether the combined company will be able to keep up with that kind of output.
In the meantime, Amazon seems intent on filling the gap in the program.
The company’s upcoming slate is a diverse offering of films: Coming this year are features like “Sheep Investigators,” a comedy murder mystery that will come out in May, the action-packed “Masters of the Universe” set for June and “Verity,” a psychological thriller based on Colleen Hoover’s book of the same name, arriving in October.
Like “Project Hail Mary,” based on Andrew Weir’s novel, “Verity” will likely benefit from a built-in fan base of readers who want to see the story translated to the big screen.
“Bottom line, ‘Project Hail Mary’ is the new gold standard for what they can achieve in the movie world,” Robbins said. “It’s great news for an entire industry that’s adapting to short window queues, consolidation, and ever-changing consumer trends. You can bet every studio, even the old guard, in the business will be looking at the takeaways from Amazon’s success with this movie. The power of the movie experience is on full display right now.”
Disclosure: Versant is the parent company of CNBC and Fandango.
#Project #Hail #Mary #box #office #proof #Amazon #MGM #waiting