The Equalizer 3 Box Office: Sony’s The Equalizer 3, which brings back director Antonie Fuqua and star Denzel Washington, is a big hit at the box office and a great way to end the summer.
The movie’s best opening in the series was the last push needed to push domestic summer income over $4 billion for the first time since the pandemic. This was a big win for Hollywood studios and theater owners, who had been struggling since the pandemic.
With a projected opening weekend of $42.3 million, Equalizer 3 is the second-biggest movie to open on Labor Day, far behind Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, which opened to $94.7 million.
Shang-Chi, which came out in 2021 when the box office was still struggling to recover from the pandemic, was one of the few big movies to come out on Christmas.
Friday was the day that the industry hit the $4 billion mark. By Labor Day, it looks like the overall summer number for 2023 will be $4.087 billion, which is a 19% increase over 2022 but still 6 percent behind 2019. Before Barbenheimer, summer sales were 7 percent behind schedule for 2022 and 15 percent behind schedule for 2019.
Paul Dergarabedian, an analyst at Comscore, says, “After a three-year break, the industry was able to generate enough summer box office heat to again reach the $4 billion benchmark for the season.
This is a remarkable achievement made even more interesting by the unexpected and often confusing path that led to this important milestone.”
“From Barbenheimer to Sound of Freedom and a number of other high-profile hits and some strange flops, this important 18-week corridor showed how unpredictable it can be. Equalizer 3 is a great way to end the series!”
Before the weekend, it looked like Equalizer 3 would make $30 million over the four days, but strong word-of-mouth and the audience’s A CinemaScore made that impossible. The movie does better when people of different backgrounds watch it. According to PostTrak, 33% of Friday ticket buyers were Caucasians. This was followed by 31% of Blacks, 20% of Latinos, and 15% of Asians/Other.
The first Equalizer opened to $34.1 million, and the second one opened to $36 million, not taking inflation into account. Even more impressive is how well Equalizer 3 did given that Washington couldn’t do much to promote the movie because of the actors’ strike.
Overseas, the movie’s first few markets brought in a great $26.1 million, giving it a global opening of at least $68.4 million through Monday.
Barbie by Greta Gerwig stayed at No. 2 with ease in its seventh weekend, making an estimated $13.1 million. The Warner Bros. movie hit another big mark on September 1 when it made $600 million in the U.S. and passed the $1.359 billion made by The Super Mario Bros. Movie from Universal and Illumination at the global box office.
Barbie is now the highest-grossing movie of 2023. As of Sunday, it had made $771.5 million worldwide, bringing its total earnings to $1.38 billion.
In the rest of the top five, DC’s Blue Beetle is on track to be No. 3 at the Labor Day box office with an expected $9.2 million in four-day sales, giving it a domestic total of $458.5 million. After a slow start, the movie is doing better than expected and has passed the $100 million mark around the world.
In its second weekend, Gran Turismo: Based on a True Story from Sony is falling by a big 62 percent. The movie made an estimated $8.6 million over Labor Day weekend, bringing its domestic total to $30.7 million through Monday and its global total to $81 million.
Like Barbie, Oppenheimer is still making news in its seventh weekend. The movie has made more than $850 million worldwide, making it Christopher Nolan’s third-biggest movie ever.
It should be No. 5 in North America with $7.2 million over the four-day holiday weekend, bringing its home total to $310.3 million through Monday. It has made $542.7 million internationally, giving it an estimated total of $853 million as of Monday.
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