‘The Meg’ bites into ticket sales
Adding to Hollywood’s sizzling summer, the shark thriller “The Meg” opened well above expectations with an estimated $44.5 million in ticket sales, while Spike Lee had his best debut in a decade.
“The Meg” had been forecast by some analysts for closer to half that total. An American-Chinese co-production between Warner Bros. and China’s Gravity Pictures, it also debuted well overseas, taking in $50.3 million in China and totaling $96.8 million internationally, according to studio estimates Sunday.
With an international cast led by Jason Statham and featuring Li Bingbing, Rainn Wilson and Winston Chao, “The Meg” cost at least $130 million to make.
Following hits such as “The Shallows” and “47 Meters Down,” the shark movie — 43 years after Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” — has been showing surprising bite at the box office.
Lee’s critically acclaimed “BlacKkKlansman” also opened strongly with $10.8 million in 1,512 theaters. The Focus Features release, which took the Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival in May, was timed to the anniversary of the violent clashes between white nationalists and antiracism counterprotesters in Charlottesville, Virginia. Lee’s film, produced by Jordan Peele (“Get Out”), is a true-life tale of AfricanAmerican police detective Ron Stallworth (played by John David Washington, son of Denzel), who in 1979 infiltrated a Colorado Springs, Colorado, cell of the Ku Klux Klan.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to comScore. Final domestic figures will be released today.
1. “The Meg”: $44.5million
2. “Mission: Impossible — Fallout”: $20 million
3. “Christopher Robin”: $12.4million
4. “Slender Man”: $11.3 million
5. “BlacKkKlansman”: $10.8 million
6. “The Spy Who Dumped Me”: $6.6 million
7. “Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again”: $5.8 million
8. “The Equalizer 2”: $5.5million
9. “Hotel Transylvania 3”: $5.1 million
10. “Ant-Man and the Wasp”: $4million