Disney’s new Marvel hit, “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings,” wiped out Labor Day weekend box office records, a whopping $ 75.5 million in three days. It is expected to provide $ 90 million for the full four-day weekend, according to Comscore.
Why it’s important: Its three-day inauguration was the second highest so far during the pandemic after Marvel’s other Disney hit, “Black Widow,” which demonstrated the power of the Marvel franchise to lure people to theaters.
- The previous Labor Day record was MGM’s horror film “Halloween,” which earned just over $ 30 million over the long weekend of 2007.
Be smart: “Shang-Chi” was expected to go well in part because it didn’t have much competition over the weekend and because of the way it was launched.
- It was the first Marvel film that Disney was available exclusively in theaters since the pandemic began.
- The film has so far grossed more than $ 127 million in global box office sales, according to Comscore.
Asian participation helped fuel ticket sales for the first big-budget Asian-directed superhero film. According to Bloomberg, citing Disney figures, Asian filmmakers “accounted for about 17% of theater-goers over the weekend, more than double the usual turnout in a Marvel movie.”
- Proponents of a larger and more accurate Asian representation will likely view these figures as an indication that Shang-Chi history transcended its ethnic origins. It has an audience score of 98% on Rotten Tomatoes, a movie review website.
- While Asians are the majority in the world and the fastest growing ethnic or racial group in the United States, they are among the least represented in the media.
- When they are, their roles “are often downplayed and imprisoned by Hollywood clichés,” Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas he wrote on Twitter. “That’s why Shang-Chi matters.”
The big picture: The film’s success gives hope to the film industry by the fall that more studios will continue to maintain their successes on the release schedule, even as the Delta variant continues to impact consumer confidence overall.
- Paramount said last week that it would push the release of “Top Gun: Maverick” from November to May 2022 and postpone the release of “Mission: Impossible 7” from May to September 2022.
- Overall, the box office is well behind the 2019 totals and is unlikely to recover significantly until 2022, analysts told Axios.
In depth: Marvel’s “Shang-Chi” strikes at a unique moment