‘Godzilla vs. Kong’ Is Now the Biggest Film of the Pandemic
Godzilla vs. Kong had another solid weekend at the box office — so solid, in fact, that after just 10 days, it is now the top-grossing movie of the entire coronavirus pandemic. It earned another $13.3 million over the weekend, bringing its box-office total to $69.5 million in the United States so far. Among films released since last March, that’s easily #1. Its closest competitor is Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, which opened in theaters last August. Tenet’s box office total from domestic theaters back then was $57.9 million.
If all of that is reason to be cautiously optimistic that movie theaters are slowly returning to something like normal, the rest of the weekend’s top five movies tell a different story. None of them earned more than $3 million, and the only new picture — the science-fiction film Voyagers starring Tye Sheridan and Lily-Rose Depp — barely cracked the top five with a paltry $1.3 million.
Here’s the full weekend top five at the box office:
- Godzilla vs. Kong - $13.3 million
- Nobody - $2.6 million
- The Unholy - $2.4 million
- Raya and the Last Dragon - $2.1 million
- Voyagers - $1.3 million
The next big test for the box office will come on April 23 with the release of the new film version of Mortal Kombat. Like Godzilla vs. Kong, it’s also getting a simultaneous HBO Max release, so we’ll have to see whether more people keep returning to theaters, or if they’re content to keep catching that title at home. After that, things will be pretty quiet until May 14, when Spiral: From the Book of Saw, restarts the tried-and-true horror franchise. Then, on Memorial Day, there’s A Quiet Place: Part II, which was originally supposed to open in theaters in March 2020.
After that, there’s something a little closer to a regular summer season, with a big movie almost every single weekend, including The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, In the Heights, F9: The Fast Saga, and Black Widow. Whether box office totals return to something closer to a regular summer season remains to be seen. Still, it’s hard to imagine at least a couple of those aforementioned titles not breaking the record Godzilla vs. Kong just set.
Gallery — Box Office Bombs That Are Actually Good: