“Project Hail Mary” is setting records for Amazon MGM and lighting the path for a box-office revitalization.
The science fiction flick, starring Ryan Gosling, has tallied more than $300 million globally since its theatrical opening two weeks ago. That marks the best performance for an Amazon MGM film ever.
“The runaway success of ‘Project Hail Mary’ represents a key turning point for Amazon MGM giving the distributor its first $100 million plus domestic box office earner,” said Paul Dergarabedian, head of marketplace trends at Comscore.
“Project Hail Mary” has held notably strong at the box office since its debut, with only a 32% drop in ticket sales from its first weekend in the U.S. to its second and a nearly unheard of 5% decline internationally. A typical Hollywood blockbuster will see a 50% to 70% drop in ticket sales from opening weekend to the second weekend after the rush to the theater fades.
“When Amazon showcased ‘Project Hail Mary’ at CinemaCon exactly one year ago, it was clear the studio had big plans in mind,” said Shawn Robbins director of analytics at Fandango and founder of Box Office Theory. “After two incredible weekends so far, the movie is a major contributor in year-over-year box office gains.”
Domestically, the film has tallied about $165 million, helping to prop up first-quarter box-office numbers alongside Disney’s “Hoppers” and Paramount’s “Scream 7.” Through Sunday, the domestic box office has tallied $1.75 billion so far this year, up 23% from the same period last year.
Back in 2022, e-commerce giant Amazon and relative upstart movie studio MGM promised to spend around $1 billion each year on theatrical releases, a figure that would fund between 12 and 15 films annually. Last year, the company said it had 14 titles lined up for 2026.
This surge of theatrical content is just what the domestic box office needs. While blockbuster franchise films have been abundant in the wake of the pandemic, the overall number of wide releases has shrunk over the last decade. Even before Covid and dual Hollywood labor strikes slowed production down, Hollywood was making fewer and fewer movies each year, according to data from Comscore.
At the same time that studios were altering their film slates, movie houses were merging. The most recent union between the Walt Disney Co. and 21st Century Fox, first announced in 2017 and finalized in early 2019, resulted in the loss of between 10 and 15 film releases annually, Comscore data shows.
The pending merger of Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery has Hollywood fearful of even fewer theatrical releases.
While Paramount has said it is committed to releasing 15 films from each studio, it’s unclear if the combined company will be able to keep up with that kind of production.
In the meantime, Amazon appears poised to fill a gap in the schedule.
The company’s upcoming slate is a diverse offering of films: Coming this year are features like “The Sheep Detectives,” a comedy murder mystery due out in May, the action-packed “Masters of the Universe” set for June and “Verity,” a psychological thriller adapted from the Colleen Hoover book of the same name, arriving in October.
Like “Project Hail Mary,” which is based on the book by Andy Weir, “Verity” may benefit from a built-in fanbase of readers who want to see the story translated to the big screen.
“Bottom line, ‘Project Hail Mary’ is the studio’s new gold standard for what they can accomplish in the world of cinema,” Robbins said. “That’s good news for an entire industry still adapting to the tailwinds of shorter windows, consolidation, and ever-evolving consumer habits. You can bet every studio, even the old guard, in the business will be looking at the takeaways from Amazon’s success with this film. The power of the moviegoing experience is on full display right now.”
Disclosure: Versant is the parent company of CNBC and Fandango.
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