The spice is definitely flowing at the weekend box office, with Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two opening as per expectations with an estimated $70-80 million three-day haul. According to Deadline, the Thursday/Friday total should be somewhere in the neighbourhood of $30-34 million, with the film likely hitting about $76 million. However, other trades say it may go higher if it really over-performs over the rest of the weekend. Whatever the case, this marks the biggest opening for a movie since Five Nights at Freddy’s back in October. Notably, the film is skewing older than most other tentpole movies, which bodes well for its long-term prospects at the box office. Oppenheimer opened similarly, with $82 million, before legging out to an amazing $329 million domestically. The reason? Older audiences typically don’t rush out to see movies on opening weekend. A lot of people want to see this one on an IMAX screen, and don’t want to have to deal with long-lines and crappy last minute seats (no one wants to be front row at an IMAX screening).
Another thing that bodes well for Dune: Part Two’s box office prospects is the A CinemaScore rating, which polls audience sentiment after seeing the film. The first film only managed an A- suggesting audiences liked this one a lot more, which seemed to be reflected in an article we wrote polling our readers.
Indeed, Dune: Part Two is certainly a movie we’ve been pulling for here at JoBlo. I gave the film a rare 10/10 rating, and just a few days ago, I was lucky enough to attend a special screening in Montreal hosted by none other than Villeneuve himself. Check it out:
Considering how much money Dune is raking in, early reports aren’t really revealing much about what other movies are making, but we’ll be back tomorrow with our full box office wrap-up. Even if it opens slightly under our expectations, Dune: Part Two hasn’t got much in the way of competition coming up, with next weekend’s Kung Fu Panda 4 aimed at a family audience that isn’t really in Dune’s wheelhouse (although it’s certainly a cool family movie if you have older kids).
Will Dune 2 have legs at the box office? Let us know in the comments.