‘Blue Beetle’ Takes No. 1 But Slides to $25 Million Box Office Opening

The reign of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” atop the box office charts has come to an end with Warner Bros./DC’s “Blue Beetle” taking the top spot at the box office, but that’s not much help for the new superhero film as it opens below pre-release projections with an estimated $25 million opening weekend from 3,871 locations.

Prior to release, “Blue Beetle” was projected for an opening weekend of $28-32 million from 3,871 locations, but barring a larger than expected walk-up surge, it won’t get there as the film earned an opening day total of $10 million, including $3.3 million from Thursday previews.

This wouldn’t be so bad if audience reception scores were stellar and suggested a strong possibility that word-of-mouth could help “Blue Beetle” leg out, but that’s not quite the case.

While the film’s Rotten Tomatoes scores are generally positive at 76% critics and 92% audience, “Blue Beetle” has earned a B+ on CinemaScore, same as what the ill-fated “Shazam!: Fury of the Gods” earned last spring. PostTrak scores are slightly better with 4/5 among general audiences and 5/5 among families, compared to 3.5/5 and 4.5/5 in those respective groups for “Shazam 2”

The data suggests that the movie might have strong buzz among some families and among Latino moviegoers — the latter group overindexed with 40% of the opening day audience — but with a production spend reported to be at least $104 million before marketing, “Blue Beetle” needs buzz across demographics to truly leg out against its budget level.

Universal’s “Strays” is doing even worse at the box office with an opening of just $8.5 million from 3,223 theaters, falling short of projections for an opening weekend in the low teens and short of what is needed for a film with a reported $46 million production budget.

The R-rated comedy about a group of stray dogs got mixed reviews from critics with a 54% RT score and only mildly positive returns from audiences with a B+ on CinemaScore. The film’s opening may fall short of the third weekend of Paramount’s “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem,” which is currently estimated in the $8-9 million range as its domestic total reaches $88.5 million.

More to come…

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