‘Aquaman’ Becomes King Of The DCEU & Hits Nearly $950 Million Worldwide [Box Office]

We’re beginning to sound like a broken record, but here we are — another week, another massive win for Warner Bros.’ “Aquaman” at the box office and while the narrative remains the same — the domination of the undersea Atlantean king,  at least the horror/thriller “Escape Room” gives us something new to discuss.

READ MORE: ‘Aquaman’: James Wan Unleashes An Overblown But Entertaining Visual Spectacle From The Depths Of A Goofy Imagination [Review]

But, the story is really all about the fish man. James Wan’s “Aquaman” has done it again (as if anyone doubted the film would repeat again), with another #1 spot and a weekend domestic total of $30 million and only a drop of -41.1% (and it’s actually gone up in theater count). With only one major film debuting this weekend, there just wasn’t anything standing in the way of Jason Momoa and his underwater antics. That being said, this weekend does feature a couple more milestones for the superhero flick.

First, and foremost, after the international totals have been counted, “Aquaman” now sits at a $940 million worldwide, which finally puts it far past “Batman v. Superman: Dawn Of Justice” ($873 million) as the highest-grossing DCEU film, full stop. Now, the last major hurdle for Wan’s film is the coveted $1 billion mark, which at this point, it should probably cross before next weekend. “Aquaman” also entered some hallowed ground with its international box office this weekend. With an international total of $681 million, the superhero film has passed Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight Rises” ($637 million) as the highest-grossing DC superhero film overseas, period. Like it or not, film fans, “Aquaman” has started to encroach on that precious Nolan trilogy. It has two worldwide figures to beat to become the undisputed king of the all-time DCEU, both of which seem doable; “The Dark Knight Rises” at $1,084,939,099 and “The Dark Knight” at $1,004,934,033).

As much as “Aquaman” is a tsunami overseas, domestically, it’s a different story. Sure, “Aquaman,” is still performing extremely well, $259 million and counting, but as far as modern DCEU records, four films are ahead of it “Man Of Steel,” “Suicide Squad,” ‘Batman V Superman’ and “Wonder Woman” are all ahead of that figure. Given, its rate of growth now, “Aquaman” should be able to cross $300 million easily and like get to ‘Dawn of Justice’s number ($330M), but “Wonder Woman” ($412M) will likely remain Queen of the DCEU at home. Neither of those figures is even close to the domestic totals of the two aforementioned Christopher Nolan-made ‘Batman’ films which will likely remain the highest grossing domestic DC Films for years to come).  “Aquaman” is a hit for sure, but it’s much more of an international phenomenon and thanks in part to China. 72.4% of the “Aquaman” global gross is from international audiences, and $261M of that figure comes from China (35.7% of the foreign totals).

READ MORE: ‘Escape Room’ Is A Fun, Well-Crafted Thriller That Can’t Escape Ridiculous Franchise Ambitions [Review]

As for the only major debut this weekend, “Escape Room” proved critics “wrong” with an estimated $18 million domestically this weekend. With a reported production budget of $9 million (before P&A), this is a great start for the thriller that has seen some pretty mixed reviews (and that’s being generous). However, audiences not only didn’t agree with critics, but with a CinemaScore of a ‘B,’ “Escape Room” is nothing short of huge success with the average moviegoer. Rarely do these types of films score anything above a ‘C,’ on that survey, so “Escape Room” should have some solid word-of-mouth moving forward.

As you might expect, “Mary Poppins Returns” (-44.4%)  “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” (-30.8%)  and “Bumblebee” (-38.9%)  battled for the third, fourth, and fifth spots this weekend respectively, with each posting solid weekend-to-weekend numbers and decent holds. Dissecting the success/failure of each of these three films would require a completely separate story (hmmmm…), but suffice to say, all of them would prefer to have a far greater domestic and worldwide totals at this point (‘Poppins’ $257M worldwide, ‘Spider-Verse’ $275M worldwide, ‘Bumblebee’ $289M worldwide).

Again, we can blame that pesky fish bro at the top, who seems to be munching on all the box office chum. The Bumblebee” film, in particular, is doing very poor compared to the previous installments of the ‘Transformer‘ movies.  Even 2017’s poorly performing, by “Transformers” standards, ‘The Last Night’ made $605.4 million worldwide. At this rate, “Bumblebee” will be lucky if it can make half that which is perhaps a sad sign that audiences preferred the nasty, vulgar, loud and obnoxious Michael Bay-helmed versions of these movies.

An interesting, underreported story is Clint Eastwood‘s “The Mule,” which isn’t at all an Oscar contender (though who knows when the nominations arrive), but is performing really well. Compare it to Annapurna’s awards contender which cost $60 million and has made only $29M so far. “The Mule” cost $50 million, but has made $81M so far (far be it from me to tell penny pinch on filmmakers, but the budgets for both these dramas feels way too high). Even STX’s Jennifer Lopez comedy, “Second Act” has made more money than “Vice” so far. Admittedly, awards season could change all that.

At the arthouse box office, there wasn’t a whole lot of movement on the limited releases front. Mimi Leder’s “On the Basis of Sex” expanded to over 110 locations (+143.5 from last weekend), and posted a good per-theater-average of $14,920. The same can be said for Barry Jenkin’s “If Beale Street Could Talk,” which expanded to 335 locations and landed a decent PTA of $5,521. However, that latter film would probably be happier if the totals were a little higher, considering Jenkins is coming off his Oscar win and the advertising for ‘Beale Street’ has been all over the place (it’s at $4.4 million domestically so far). The big arthouse winner was Annapurna’s “Destroyer” by Karyn Kusama starring Nicole Kidman. jumping to just six theaters, the movie posted the highest indie per-screen average of $18,335.

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Meanwhile, with the Golden Globes airing later tonight, the real question for these films that are seemingly toiling around in limited release is, which will expand for an Oscar push and which will truly fade away? Expect to see the two big winners this weekend (Best Comedy, Best Drama) getting expanded plays. Otherwise, we could be seeing the end of some of these films in the coming weeks.

Next weekend’s box office narrative doesn’t look it’ll be too different. Yes, “Aquaman” will have hit $1 billion, but there will be new stories to tell. Coming to theaters nationwide are “A Dog’s Way Home,” “Replicas,” and “The Upside.” Also, “On the Basis of Sex” gets its nationwide expansion. No, none of those should beat the fish man, but at least we’ll have something slightly different to talk about.

Here’s the entire top 10 for January 4 to 6:
1. Aquaman — $30,700,000 ($259,720,880)
2. Escape Room — $18,000,000
3. Mary Poppins Returns — $15,773,000 ($138,729,305)
4. Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse — $13,010,000 ($133,861,346)
5. Bumblebee — $12,775,000 ($97,128,140)
6. The Mule — $9,040,000 ($81,108,110)
7. Vice —$5,803,490 ($29,796,477)
8. Second Act — $4,910,000 ($32,947,075)
9. Ralph Breaks the Internet — $4,685,000 ($187,164,171)
10. Holmes and Watson — Sony — $3,400,000 ($28,410,922)