Box Office: Marvel’s ‘Shang-Chi’ Crushes Labor Day Weekend Records With $94 Million
Marvel's "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings" capped off Labor Day weekend at the box office with a bang.
variety.com
Marvel's "Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings" capped off Labor Day weekend at the box office with a bang. The superhero action adventure, starring Canadian actor Simu Liu, had an even bigger debut than expected, collecting $90 million in its first four days of release and setting a new high watermark for the holiday weekend.
Since Labor Day is traditionally a slow weekend at the box office, the film's three day total of $75.5 million from 4,300 theaters blew past previous the record set by 2007's "Halloween" and its $30.6 million start. Despite concerns the delta variant would keep audiences at home, "Shang-Chi" notched the second-biggest opening weekend of the pandemic, behind only "Black Widow" with $80 million. Impressively, it ranked ahead of Universal's "Fast & Furious" sequel "F9" ($70 million) and Paramount's "A Quiet Place Part II" ($48 million), both of which opened earlier in summer at time when COVID-19 looked like it might eventually abate.
At the international box office, "Shang-Chi" amassed $56.2 million in key markets such as France, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom and Japan. The film doesn't have a release date in China, which is an important territory for Marvel movies. Globally, "Shang-Chi" has made $146.2 million so far.
"'Black Widow' showed what a Marvel movie can do in pandemic conditions, and that release had the additional burden of a streaming option," says David A. Gross. "For Marvel, 'Shang-Chi' is a creative departure, and at a cost of over $150 million, the results are very good."
Unlike "Black Widow," which debuted simultaneously on Disney Plus, "Shang-Chi" is playing only in theaters for its first 45 days of release before it lands on-demand. Disney CEO Bob Chapek called its theatrical-only release an "interesting experiment" and indicated its ticket sales would influence plans for future releases, such as "Eternals," which is scheduled for Nov. 5.