The New Mutants posts $750k Thursday as the global box office rebounds

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

In the face of middling to negative reviews, Disney/20th Century Studios’ THE NEW MUTANTS managed to gross $750k during Thursday night previews, during a time when the coronavirus pandemic continues its wicked ways. The total comes in after Fox's last X-Men movie opened in a marketplace where only 62% of all theaters are open and operational. How the film will perform during its 3-day debut is anyone's guess, seeing as a total of 60% of moviegoers are reluctant to return to theaters at this time, according to a recent Atom Tickets poll. Add to this the fact that theaters in prime areas like California, New York, New Jersey, Arizona (partial), North Carolina, Michigan, Maryland, and New Mexico remain closed and you've got a lot of unknowns. But, one thing is for sure, come Monday we will all have a better idea of just how far the box office is from returning to normal.

Now, I'm not trying to say that the box office is doomed. Far from it, actually. In fact, according to the U.K.-based film industry analytics firm Gower Street, China this week became the first global market to make a "full box office recovery." Variety's Rebecca Davis recently broke down the firm's findings, saying that Gower Street created five targets to track and compare the paths of different territories’ exhibition sectors back to recovery. The indicators move from stage one — a point when a significant majority (80%) of cinemas are ready to resume operations — to stage five, in which business over the course of a week is equivalent to that of the top quartile of weekly earnings from the past two years.

If all goes according to plan, and stage five is achieved, the box office “should react as normal, with an ebb and flow dependent on the release calendar." Heres' the rub, though. In order to reach stage five, China will need to crank out a weekly box office total of $184 million. Thankfully, China hit that target just five days into this week starting Friday, Aug. 21, with $189 million in receipts after tallying Tuesday's totals. It's also worth noting that 90% of Chinese cinemas are operational even though they've opened with coronavirus guidelines firmly in place. To be clear, these restrictions limit each theater to half capacity, making the recent totals all the more impressive and hopefully a sign of good things to come.

In terms of which film China has to thank for their recovery, the credit goes to director Hu Guan's local war film THE EIGHT HUNDRED. The film takes place in 1937, where eight hundred Chinese soldiers fight under siege from a warehouse in the middle of the Shanghai battlefield, completely surrounded by the Japanese army. Guan's war epic has grossed a total of $210 million so far and is expected to bank $459 million, according to data from Maoyan.

Here's hoping that theaters that remain closed can open soon, especially with Christopher Nolan's TENET coming to North American markets on Thursday, September 3rd.