Weekend estimates: Black Widow earns $80 million in theaters, breaks $100 million with Disney+ sales

July 11, 2021

Black Widow

Disney is celebrating a global opening worth a projected $215 million for Black Widow, thanks to $80 million in domestic theatrical receipts, $78 million in international box office, and over $60 million in Disney+ Premier Access consumer spending. That makes it the biggest domestic opening at the box office since Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker in December, 2019, and about $10 million more than F9’s pandemic-era record set two weeks ago. The studio is also celebrating more than $100 million in consumer spending in the domestic US/Canada market—and claiming another pandemic record—although theater owners are wishing that more of that money had flowed in their direction this weekend.





Disney’s Sunday-morning projection is a little below our Friday-morning prediction, which stood at $87.3 million after combining a “fundamentals” prediction of $63 million and a “previews” prediction (based on Thursday preview numbers) of $111 million. As I noted at the time, the prediction assumed that attendance would be skewed towards the previews and that the film would decline rapidly over the weekend. That theory has been borne out, with Black Widow earning $13.2 million in previews on Thursday, $26.3 million during the day on Friday (which the studio reports as $39.5 million including previews), $23.3 million on Saturday and a projected $17.2 million on Sunday. The ratio between the Thursday previews and the weekend total is 6.06, much lower than any other Marvel origins film.

Does the Disney+ release bear some responsibility for the fast fall in theatrical receipts over the weekend? That’s hard to tell for certain, but seems likely. The studio hasn’t broken out domestic and international Disney+ spending, but it’s reasonable to assume that at least half of the $60 million came from the US and Canada, which puts the total spending over the weekend at about $110 million. Interestingly, that’s exactly what the Thursday preview earnings number pointed to as the likely weekend box office, assuming the film performed like its Marvel brethren.

In other words, the superfans still turned out in theaters on Thursday evening, but some people who would have seen the film in theaters on Friday, Saturday or Sunday opted to spend $30 to watch it at home. That’s just fine from Disney’s perspective, but needless to say will be causing some sleepless nights for theater owners.

To Disney’s credit, they have at least released some numbers on home spending this weekend, which is something we’ve mostly been guessing at. They might only have done it so they can claim a $100-million weekend, so I suspect it won’t usher in a wave of increased openness about home viewership, but it does at least give us a benchmark. Roughly two thirds of consumer spending on Black Widow this weekend was from theatrical showings and one third from Disney+. That lines up with our current estimate that 65% of action movie fans are currently coming to theaters, and suggests that the 35% are fine with spending their money at home.

All-in-all, this makes this weekend a bit of a mixed bag for the industry. A new high-water mark at the box office is reason for celebration, and we’ve also handily topped $100 million overall this weekend. But, unless Jungle Cruise does much better than expected, we won’t see a $100-million weekend for an individual film in July, and The Suicide Squad will have a lot of heavy lifting to do if August is going to be considered a success. I’ll have more on that in our latest 2021 forecast soon, but for now, let’s call this a glass half full weekend.

- Weekend studio estimates

Bruce Nash,

Filed under: Weekend Estimates, F9: The Fast Saga, Black Widow