2024-03-04 11:44:22
Just as the hero of the film Dune 2 becomes the chosen one for the desert people living on an arid planet, the epic sci-fi full of action scenes and rides on majestic desert worms also became the chosen one for cinema operators.
The film, Dune: Part Two, grossed $81.5 million in the first weekend in the US and Canada, adding another $97 million in foreign markets, including the Czech Republic. In total, the new film by director Denis Villeneuve has 178.5 million dollars on its account, which translates to about 4.1 billion crowns, the AP agency reported.
“Dune 2 has dominated the market. It has become a major cultural event worldwide,” boasts Jeff Goldstein, head of American distribution at Warner Bros., which produced the spectacle. “It’s an amazing movie made to be seen on the big screen. We feel like that’s exactly what’s happening,” adds producer Mary Parent of Legendary, which financed the film.
According to the Variety.com server, the budget was around 190 million dollars, and another 100 million was spent on marketing. In total, Dune 2 cost about 290 million dollars, equivalent to 6.7 billion crowns. Nevertheless, everything now indicates that it will not only earn on itself, but will be profitable, which could lead to the creation of a third part.
In its opening weekend in the US and Canada, Dune 2 earned almost twice as much as the first installment in 2021. Including foreign sales, this is the best entry into theaters since last July, when the satirical comedy Barbie debuted with $337 million worldwide.
At the same time, Dune 2 also has a response from critics. On the review aggregator Rottentomatoes.com, its score is around 93 percent from reviewers, and it even got 96 percent from viewers. This is an achievement, even considering that the film is set in a sci-fi world that audiences must already be familiar with and that it runs for almost three hours, so families need to set aside time to visit the cinema.
Dune 2 stars Timothée Chalamet as Paul Atreides and Zendaya as Chani. | Photo: Niko Tavernis
Dune 2 is the first big-budget title of the year that theaters needed. Although at the beginning of the year, last year’s titles such as the fantasy musical Wonka from Warner Bros. or the romantic comedy With You Never were still doing well in the US and Canada, in the first two months the sales of any film at home did not approach the $100 million mark.
So Warner Bros. released Dune 2 at a time when there was virtually no competition on the market. In the first weekend, 4,071 theaters started showing it in the US and Canada, and the audience gave it the highest possible mark in exit polls. About 59 percent of the audience was male, 64 percent of them were over 25 years old. Projections in so-called premium formats such as IMAX provided almost half of the sales. It was on these digital cameras that director Villeneuve shot.
With a result of 81.5 million dollars in the first weekend in the USA and Canada, Dune 2 became the most commercially successful film to date not only for director Villeneuve, but also for actors Timothé Chalamet, Austin Butler and Rebecca Ferguson. “All indications are that this is going to be a long haul,” said producer Mary Parent, who expects the following weekends to see a gradual decline in sales. In addition, Dune 2 is yet to be released in cinemas in Japan and China, which is the second largest film market in the world after the US.
The film was originally supposed to premiere last October, but Warner Bros. postponed it due to a Hollywood strike by screenwriters and actors. This would make it impossible for the stars to participate in the promotion, whereas now the actors have completed festive premieres in New York, London, Mexico City, South Korea or Abu Dhabi in recent weeks.
The first part of Dune premiered in 2021 under a non-standard situation, when cinemas in most countries of the world were closed due to the coronavirus epidemic. At that time, the studio sent the film to cinemas and at the same time published it in the HBO Max video library. Nevertheless, Dune earned $40 million in its first weekend and ended up grossing over $400 million worldwide, adds the AP agency.
“Denis Villeneuve, like Christopher Nolan, has fallen into the category of directors whose films people automatically want to see in the cinema and don’t need more,” notes Paul Dergarabedian of the analytics company Comscore. According to him, the success of Dune 2 shows how much one film can change the overall numbers in Hollywood. Even last weekend, it lagged year-on-year compared to sales from 2022 by roughly 20 percent. After Dune 2’s first weekend, it’s only about 13 percent behind.
Warner Bros. will try to follow up on the commercial success of Dune with the big-budget action film Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire at the end of the month. In May, they will send Furiosa from the world of Mad Max to theaters, in September the sequel Beetlejuice by Tim Burton, and in October the expected comic book Joker 2. “This will be our year,” hopes Jeff Goldstein of Warner Bros.
Video: Dune 2 trailer
The film Dune: Part Two has been showing in Czech cinemas since last Thursday. | Video: Vertical Ent.