International Round Up: Deliver Us from Box Office Doldrums

August 13, 2020

Deliver Us From Evil

South Korea had an explosive weekend with Deliver Us From Evil earning the best opening in that market since January. The film pulled in $10.59 million on 1,997 screens over the weekend for a total opening of $15.03 million. There is still some bad news in the market though. For instance, Steel Rain 2: Summit fell 70% from last weekend to $1.49 million on 1,016 screens for a total of $10.74 million so far. Peninsula fell a further 67% to $748,000 on 639 screens for a total of $27.08 million after four weeks of release. These are sharp declines, even for South Korea, which isn’t known for long legs. That said, they are not a disaster. Additionally, while the overall box office is only about half of what it was this weekend last year, there are still restrictions in seating capacity in theaters and the lack of depth are still factors, so it appears the box office is in shape to truly bounce back once the situation has returned to normal.

China is starting to see a return to normal with multiple new releases this week. 1917 debuted in first place with $5.29 million, while Interstellar earned second place during its re-release with $4.24 million. This is an improvement from last week, but a mere fraction of what the box office pulled in this weekend last year. However, there are some major releases on the horizon, so the box office could return in a major way when Mulan and Tenet debut there.

We are seeing a few Hollywood releases getting some action in some international markets. For example Greenland opened in France, and sold 148,000 tickets. This put it just ahead of local family film, Les Blagues de toto, which sold 139,000 tickets. Hobbs & Shaw sold nearly 900,000 tickets this weekend last year, so the market has a long way to go before it has recovered; however, we can also chose to focus on the positive, as the total box office was up about 20% from last weekend.

Netherlands also had some great news as Trolls World Tour debuted with $245,000 over the weekend. This helped the box office grow by 60% from last weekend. We shouldn’t spend too much time comparing the box office to this weekend last year, as there’s very few positive things we can say about that. Trolls World Tour’s opening was about on par with Dora and the Lost City of Gold’s total opening and that movie only managed fourth place last year.

The final bit of good news coincidentally came from New Zealand. Why is that a coincidence? Have you ever wondered where Old Zealand is? It’s in the Netherlands. The New Zealand box office was led by a local comedy, Run This Town, with $128,000. This is better than the $101,000 Unhinged opened with last weekend. It also helped the top ten grow 9% week-over-week. Again, it is just a mere fraction of what we saw this weekend last year, but I’m choosing to focus on the positive signs.

Unfortunately, there are some markets where that’s a lot more difficult. For example, Germany’s top ten was down 27% from last weekend. However, they also haven’t had a new release since Unhinged came out four weeks ago. This is also the cause for the United Kingdom’s 17% decline from its top ten last week and Australia’s 12% decline. Spain was also down, as the top ten dipped 19%, but it was led by a local hit, Padre no hay más que uno 2, which pulled in $1.2 million over the frame during its sophomore stint. The lack of new releases or the lack of depth, usually both, is becoming a serious issue. Fortunately for the international marketplace, most Hollywood studios are simply giving up waiting for the United States to recover from the effects of the pandemic, and new major releases will begin hitting some markets as early as this weekend.

Filed under: International Box Office, Mulan, Trolls: World Tour, Greenland, 1917, Tenet, Run This Town, Unhinged, Ban-do, Jeongsang hoidam, Padre no hay más que uno 2: La llegada de la suegra, Daman Akeseo Guhasoseo