Amazon has just landed its biggest box office opening ever with “Project Hail Mary,” the Phil Lord/Chris Miller adaptation of Andy Weir’s bestselling sci-fi novel, which earned $33 million from 4,007 theaters on opening day and is now projected for an opening weekend of $77 million.
For Amazon, which became Amazon MGM Studios after acquiring the legacy studio MGM in 2021, this blows past its previous domestic opening of $58.3 million set by “Creed III” in March 2023.
In fact, the only movie that is not a sequel or part of a franchise to post a higher opening weekend than “Project Hail Mary” in the past decade is Universal and Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” with $82 million in July 2023.
With its mix of outer space excitement, humor and moving moments — all coming from charismatic star Ryan Gosling — the word-of-mouth for “Project Hail Mary” has been excellent across the board with an A on CinemaScore and Rotten Tomatoes scores of 95% critics and 97% audience.
The project was a long time coming, as Weir sent the unpublished manuscript to Gosling asking if he’d be interested in starring and producing a film adaptation before it was published. Gosling set the project up at MGM with Mike De Luca in 2020, then they tapped Lord and Miller to direct, who subsequently brought on “The Martian” screenwriter Drew Goddard to write the script. Four years after the project was first announced, the team rolled cameras.
Amazon started screening the film to press extremely early to build word of mouth in the weeks ahead of its release, and it seems to have worked. Even with major competition coming next week from Universal’s “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie,” “Project Hail Mary” has everything it needs to become a spring blockbuster hit that lasts well into April.
In second place is Disney/Pixar’s “Hoppers,” which continues to leg out briskly at the box office with a $20 million third weekend total. While the film isn’t showing signs of legging out overseas as well as Pixar’s “Elemental,” it should pass that film’s $154 million domestic total — it’s currently standing at a $122 million cume through Sunday.
In third place is the Hindi action thriller “Dhurandhar: The Revenge,” the second half of Indian writer-director Aditya Dhar’s duology about an Indian counter-terrorist agent who sneaks into Pakistan’s terrorist underworld.
Released by Moviegoers Entertainment in the U.S., the film has scored an excellent $10.9 million from just 987 locations for a per theater average of just over $11,000. As seen with recent hits like “Kalki 2898 A.D.,” “Pathaan” and “Baahubali 2,” the biggest blockbusters from India have become specialty hits in the U.S. on par with Crunchyroll’s franchise anime films thanks to turnout from Indian communities across the country, and that should allow “Dhurandhar 2” to pass the $19.7 million U.S. total of its predecessor.
In fourth is Searchlight’s gory thriller “Ready or Not 2: Here I Come,” which is on pace for a $9 million opening weekend from 3,010 locations. It’s a step above the $8 million opening of the first “Ready or Not” in 2019. The film earned a B+ on CinemaScore and Rotten Tomatoes scores of 75% critics and 89% audience.
Universal’s “Reminders of Him” completes the top 5 with $8.7 million, bringing the film to a 10-day total of $33.8 million as it drops 52% from its opening weekend.
