Vim trazer um rápido
update sobre o desempenho de Alita na China.
Box Office: 'Alita' Stumbles In America But Soars In China
An overperformance for
How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World (which took its share of PLF auditoriums) was bad news for
Alita: Battle Angel. Fox's pricey ($170 million) sci-fi fantasy, directed by Robert Rodriguez and co-produced and co-written by James Cameron, earned $3.14 million (-58%) on its second Friday in North America, giving it a $$51.8m eight-day total. That positions the Rosa Salazar actioner for a $11.3m (-60%) second weekend and a $60m 11-day cume. Unless it rallies next weekend (which it still could, since there are no new biggies aside from
A Madea Funeral), a $100m domestic gross is now a pipe dream.
At this point, it's looking closer to an $85 million domestic finish, about in line (give or take inflation) with
The Lone Ranger ($88m in 2013),
John Carter ($72m in 2012) and
Terminator: Genisys ($90m in 2015). That'll be better than the $40m-$50m finishes of
Valerian,
Warcraft and
Jupiter Ascending, but that's not exactly a high bar to clear. The good news is that it's still kicking butt in China,
with a $24.8m Saturday (+25.5% from its $19.75m opening day) for what should be a $63.5m Fri-Sun frame.
That's on par with Steven Spielberg's
Ready Player One (which legged it to $218 million last year after a $61m debut in China) but it's also about on par with
Kong: Skull Island (which earned $168m from a $71m launch in 2017) and
Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales (which earned $172m from a $65m launch in 2017). If it holds up at least as well as the 2017 releases, then it could hit $150m-$166m in China alone. That would be a great result but, pending how it performs everywhere else, not quite enough to make it a hit. Now if it plays like
Ready Player One and flirts with $200m-plus (which is a big "if"), that's a different story.
Offhand, if it earns $175 million in China
(How to Train Your Dragon 3 is "only" expected to earn $30m next weekend)
, $85m in North America and over/under $200m everywhere else (
Maze Runner, Terminator: Genisys and
Ready Player One earned $220m-$238m overseas without China), then it still gets to a face-saving (if not money-making) $460m worldwide. However, if it goes the distance in China and holds up around the world, we could (again... "could") be looking at the first Hollywood flick to earn $500m worldwide without earning at least $100m in North America. Again, the reason I care (to the extent that I do) is both because I liked the movie and because Fox took a "sell the character, not the world" marketing approach.
Audiences will usually only show up to big movies if they like the lead character. Sometimes that's a superhero (Aquaman), sometimes it's a famous figure (Freddie Mercury), but they aren't going to show up for
Valerian if they don't think they'll want to spend 120-minutes hanging out with Valerian. Big-budget fantasy spectacles without a marquee lead character are at a disadvantage, and even
Hunger Games broke out by selling itself as the Katniss Everdeen story. Fox's marketing focused not on arbitrary fantasy elements or promises of worldbuilding, but rather on Alita as someone worth following into a theater. If
Alita: Battle Angel proves to be a moderate hit, it'll be because audiences liked Alita as a character and as a new cinematic hero.
The movie only works because Salazar gives a performance for the ages. Yes, it's a tentpole movie star turn that belongs alongside Gal Gadot in
Wonder Woman, Robert Downey Jr in
Iron Man, Jennifer Lawrence in
The Hunger Games (which was, all due respect, a more award-worthy turn than her actual Oscar-winning turn in
Silver Linings Playbook) and Johnny Depp in
Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl. If
Alita goes the distance, it may show Hollywood at least one way to sell a "new to you" cinematic franchise offering to relative success. We're not even at the point of discussing if
Alita will actually make money, but that we're even discussing whether it won't lose money counts as a moral win in this Netflix-and-Chill era.
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A melhor parte é ver os lacradores da mídia, que fizeram campanha negativa em cima de Alita (com o único intuito de puxar o saco da Capitã Ativista), tendo que engolir as próprias palavras e admitir que o filme está sendo bem sucedido, por mais que tenham tentado sabotá-lo com suas críticas enviesadas, projeções pessimistas e notícias pautadas pelo prisma negativo. Se fodam aí, puxa-sacos da Disney.