Is a trend beginning to form with Marvel movies in the post-2019 era? Like Black Widow, Shang-Chi owned the box office in its opening weekend, blowing past the expert predictions. It now appears that the movie had a $90 million opening domestically, and an approximate $150 million opening worldwide. The question now is, will this be like Black Widow in which the movie is tremendously frontloaded? In other words, will the movie continue to be hot in the next week, or will it make the majority of its cash off of its premiere?
The argument that Marvel movies may now be heavily skewed towards their opening off of a large and ardent fanbase is not new. It’s something many analysts wondered when Black Widow featured the largest second week fall of any modern Marvel movie. Whereas Disney+ was able to obfuscate some of the data on Black Widow, Shang-Chi is solely in theaters. We will essentially know how this movie did financially once it finishes its run.
There’s additional good news for Marvel. Because Shang-Chi had a smaller budget than most big Marvel films, it’s already on track to become profitable. The film only had a budget of $150 million, and its marketing appears to have been smaller — and less expensive — than other Marvel movies. This potentially gives Kevin Feige even more leverage in his below-the-surface rift with Disney top brass. And Bob Chapek, who was perceived to have disparaged the film’s chances prerelease, could be viewed as having proverbial egg on his face.
All of this goes down the drain, however, if Shang-Chi follows the Black Widow formula of a huge second week drop-off. So watch for next weekend to find out how successful this movie truly is, and who comes out of it more and less powerful afterwards in The Walt Disney Company.
