Timothée Chalamet in ‘Dune: Part Two.’
Warner Bros.
Denis Villeneuve‘s long-awaited Dune: Part Two is off to a promising start at the foreign box office, where it opened to $5.2 million on Wednesday from its first 13 markets. Including previews, the running foreign tally is $7.6 million.
The Legendary and Warner Bros. film will debut in a raft of additional countries today before playing in a total of 71 territories by the weekend. France led on Wednesday with $1.4 million, followed by South Korea with $1.1 million.
Dune 2 opens everywhere in North America on Friday following Thursday evening previews. Tracking suggests it could sport a global opening of $150 million to $175 million, although Warners is being more cautious and suggests closer to $140 million. The box office could use a jump-start after a dismal early winter prompted by a slowdown of product due to strike-related delays.
Overseas, tracking and advance ticket sales suggest the tentpole could start off with $85 million. That doesn’t include several key markets, including China, where the tentpole doesn’t open until next next weekend, followed by Japan the week after that.
Sci-fi can be a tough genre in some markets, such as parts of Latin America, but Dune 2 could defy this trend based on the performance of the first film and stellar reviews. Its current critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes is 95 percent, compared to 83 percent for the first Dune.
Released in 2021, Villeneuve’s Dune grossed more than $402 million at the worldwide box office, a promising number considering the ongoing pressures of the pandemic and the fact that it was released day-and-date on what was then called HBO Max. The lion’s share, or $325 million, came from the foreign box office.
This time, the expectations are much higher.
Legendary made the difficult decision to delay the movie’s release from last fall to now so that Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya would be available to publicize the movie and help broaden out the audience. Both have sway with younger viewers.
The long game, versus opening weekend, will be the true test for director Denis Villeneuve’s sequel in terms of solidifying a new franchise for Legendary.
Villeneuve would like to make one more film, Dune: Messiah, while Warners has a spinoff series, Dune: Prophecy, due out on Max later this year.
The expansive cast includes series newcomers Austin Butler, Florence Pugh and Christopher Walken, joining Rebecca Ferguson, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin, Stellan Skarsgard, Dave Bautista and Charlotte Rampling.
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