Amazon MGM Studios’ Challengers is being called at a $15M opening, which is officially the biggest opening ever for Oscar-nominated filmmaker Luca Guadagnino. It’s also the best we’ve seen from Zendaya for a live-action, original, non-IP movie. Friday/previews are $6.2M, Saturday was $5M, -19% and the studio has the confidence that Sunday will come in at $3.78M.
Before this, the widest release for Guadagnino was his Timothée Chalamet cannibal romance, Bones and All, which went wide over Thanksgiving weekend with $2.2M over 3-days, $3.6M over 5-days, and finaled at $7.8M back in 2022.
What happens now in this cruel summer box office that might not hit $3 billion? This coming weekend, it’s Universal’s The Fall Guy, starring Emily Blunt and Ryan Gosling. If it’s lucky after a SXSW world premiere over a month ago, it will hit $40M, and the expectation is that movie will hold and pull in women thanks to post-Barbie Gosling Ken.
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