Alita: Battle Angel has record-breaking $62 million debut in China

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Upon its debut weekend, ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL surprised many with a stronger-than-expected opening, amassing about $40 million across the holiday weekend. That’s fantastic business for a movie people thought would be DOA, but the impressive visuals and wild action sold people on the Robert Rodriguez-directed and James Cameron-produced sci-fi action flick. Now that success is proving even bigger overseas, as the movie has topped the Chinese box office with a record-breaking $62-65 million weekend, giving it the biggest opening ever there for 20th Century Fox and the best February IMAX showing. 

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This is terrific news for the big-budget spectacle feature because although the opening was a strong sign for its domestic total it was a drop in the bucket needed to recoup that $170 million production total. As well, the movie took a 58 percent tumble this weekend for a $12 million domestic weekend, bringing it to $60 million on this side of the world. With that impressive showing in China, the movie is at over $260 million globally, and counting, meaning the odds of it breaking even are looking better and better.

As the report from THR notes, the movie is currently pacing 8 percent ahead of last year’s READY PLAYER ONE, another incredibly expensive, risky venture from Warner Bros. that owes much of its success to the Chinese market. Over there it topped at $216 million, compared to the $140 million or so domestically. Folks at Fox are saying ALITA needs to make at least $350 million to break even, while outside sources say it’s somewhere between $400-500 million. Still, should ALITA keep on the same pace as READY PLAYER ONE, it will easily crack $400 million, and mix that in with another $20-30 million its likely to still make over here, the movie breaking even is all but assured.

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The only thing stopping the flick from meeting those goals is the impending release of HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 3 in China, as well as the global rolling out of Marvel’s CAPTAIN MARVEL next week. The release of both those films should take away a hefty chunk of ALITA’s box office, and while that doesn’t spell doom – especially when reaching a minimum of $350 million – the continuing weekends may not be as strong as the big openings would’ve set it up for.

No matter what it makes total at this point, and if it breaks even or not, this is an incredible run for a movie like ALITA, one that had a lot of people expecting the worst going in. While RPO also had some people shaking, at least that had Steven Spielberg’s name and a more recognizable source material backing it up. ALITA’s source material – the manga “Gunnm” – is not known to mainstream audiences over here, basically making the movie play as more of an original project, if anything. On that note, that movie’s current box office is excellent and proved a lot of people who underestimated it wrong. That’s exactly what Alita’s (Rosa Salazar) foes did in the movie, and look what happened to them.

Go see ALITA: BATTLE ANGEL in theaters now.