“Barbie” has lost ground against “Blue Beetle” at the domestic box office. Despite a less successful than anticipated two-week opening weekend of $25.4 million, the most recent DC superhero film took the top place. “Blue Beetle,” which starred Xolo Maridueña as the alien symbiote, brought nearly $18 million from 63 markets at the international box office. It’s one of the DC Cinematic Universe’s softest launches ever, taking in $43 million worldwide.
Blue Beetle box office collection
“Barbie” managed to secure the second position with $21.5 million from 4,003 theatres, following four weekends in the top spot. This is a significant achievement for the film at this stage of its theatrical run. Greta Gerwig’s fantasy-comedy has made $567 million in its first five weeks of sales and is on track to surpass Universal’s animated “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” ($574 million) as the year’s highest domestic movie. “Blue Beetle” must beat the box office odds to justify its price tag because movie cost more than $100 million to produce and millions more to promote.
Word-of-mouth and reviews might not have much of an impact on ticket sales; the movie has a 77% Rotten Tomatoes rating and a “B+” CinemaScore. The impact of Tropical Storm Hilary “is anticipated to be significant, particularly in Southern California where the film is over-indexing,” Warner Bros. stated in a press release. After “The Flash” ($55 million in June) and “Shazam: Wrath of the Gods” ($30.1 million in March), this is the third DC movie of 2023 to bomb at the box office. Even “The Suicide Squad,” which made its theatrical and HBO Max debuts concurrently in 2021, received positive reviews.
Blue Beetle storyline and reviews
Under Ángel Manuel Soto’s direction, the story revolves around Jaime Reyes, a recent college graduate, who is selected to serve as a symbiotic host to an ancient alien biotech relic that transforms him into the superhero known as Blue Beetle. Before the studio’s new heads, James Gunn and Peter Safran, take the floundering comic book universe in a completely other path, a fourth DC adaptation, “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom,” is scheduled for release in December.
According to David A. Gross, who owns the film consulting company Franchise Entertainment Research, “the [comic book] genre has performed unevenly during the last 3-and-a-half years, after a dozen nearly flawless years.” In reference to both Disney’s upcoming sequel “The Marvels” and “Aquaman 2,” which opens on November 10, he continues, “We’re going to know more about superheroes in November and December.” In 2023 and beyond, the fate of superheroes will be decided by those two films. The talking-dog comedy “Strays” from Universal likewise struggled in its premiere, earning a pitiful $8.3 million from 3,223 theatres to position fifth.
The $46 million R-rated film may not do well abroad since hilarious films are not as popular there. With a $10 million global total and $1.9 million from 21 nations, it was a bust at the international box office. Gross states, “This is a soft opening.” “The reviews from critics are lukewarm, but the audience ratings are strong.”
Hollywood these days rarely produces theatrical comedies, and “Strays” performed significantly worse than Jennifer Lawrence’s raucous “No Hard Feelings” ($15 million) and Universal’s drug-fueled “Cocaine Bear” ($23 million), despite having a stellar voice cast that included Jamie Foxx and Will Ferrell. It was slightly better than “The Machine,” the $5 million failure that was inspired by Bert Kreischer’s stand-up routine.
Know the cast of Blue Beetle
●Xolo Maridueña as Jaime Reyes
●Bruna Marquezine as Jenny Kord
●Belissa Escobedo as Milagros Reyes
●Damián Alcázar as Alberto
●Rocio Reyes as Elpidia Carrillo
●Adriana Barraza as Nana Reyes
●George Lopez as Uncle Rudy
●Susan Sarandon as Victoria Kord
●Raoul Max Trujillo as Conrad Carapax
●Javier Guillén as Dr. Sanchez
●Becky G as Khaji-Da