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John Wick: Chapter 4 is raking in a huge, record-breaking opening weekend. The film, which premiered in theaters on March 24, is the fourth outing for Keanu Reeves’ titular action hero, who made his debut in the 2014 original film John Wick. That original outing followed the retired assassin seeking revenge for the death of his dog and the theft of his car, a mission that has since taken audiences into a huge expanded world of gun-toting mayhem.
Per Deadline, the John Wick: Chapter 4 opening weekend is now projected to take in a staggering gross of $73.5 million this weekend. This franchise-best opening gross is also the best of a surprisingly strong March, which also featured Scream VI and Creed III grossing franchise-best openings, with the latter also nabbing the best opening for any film about sports. John Wick: Chapter 4 has now also earned the highest opening for an R-rated movie since Bad Boys for Life in 2020, making it the 14th best of all time.
The Box Office is Back, But Not Because of Superheroes
John Wick: Chapter 4‘s box office take is a cherry on top of an incredible month. Nearly every step of the way, March 2023 has shown that the movie industry is starting to shake off the pandemic-depressed doldrums of the past few years. Even before March, films like Blumhouse’s M3GAN and Universal’s Cocaine Bear have turned up solid profits. However, one consistent moneymaker – the superhero movie – seems to be taking a hit this year.
February’s Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, the latest outing for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, did open at $106 million. However, over the course of its run, it fell far behind its Marvel peers, even many of the notoriously patchy box office grosses of Phase 4. This month’s DC Universe film Shazam! Fury of the Gods performed even worse, ending week 2 with even less than the relatively low-performing original Shazam!‘s opening weekend.
Typically, R-rated outings have a more limited audience, with PG-13 titles swooping in to take much larger grosses. However, both John Wick: Chapter 4 and Scream VI are R-rated outings that are raking in the profits. This could indicate that more adults are coming back to theaters in recent months, but it could also be a sign that the box office, while still dominated by IP titles, could be slowly showing legitimate signs of superhero fatigue. This is great news for the upcoming John Wick universe, which includes the television spinoff The Continental and Ana de Armas’ The Ballerina.
Source: Deadline
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