March has proven to be the shot in the arm the box office has been waiting for with the releases of Dune Part 2, Kung Fu Panda 4, and Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire getting audiences into theaters. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire continued this trend to close out the month, with the latest MonsterVerse entry blowing well past projections for its opening weekend.
Heading into Godzilla x Kong's opening weekend, it was projected to bring in roughly $45 million at the domestic box office for what would have been the second-lowest opening in franchise history. It did not end up being the case as the film opened to an opening weekend haul of roughly $80 million to celebrate Easter weekend, according to Variety.
The massive opening makes Godzilla x Kong the second-biggest domestic opening in franchise history, with 2014's Godzilla still leading with a $93 million domestic opening.
The MonsterVerse's latest success wasn't limited to the domestic market, either, as the film saw equal success globally to kick off its theatrical run. Godzilla x Kong is expected to end the weekend with an estimated worldwide total of $175 million for its opening weekend, with China believed to play a big part in it based of its opening day $13.7 million in the market.
Rounding out the top five
It is a sizeable drop off from the number one spot to number two, which was taken by Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire for its second weekend in theaters. Ghostbusters only managed to bring in around $15.7 million, a significant dip from its $45 million opening weekend, to bring the domestic total to $73.5 million.
Kung Fu Panda 4 just managed to beat out Dune Part 2 for the number three spot over Easter weekend with an additional $10 million to bring its worldwide total to $300 million. Dune, meanwhile, took the number four spot with $9 million to for an estimated worldwide haul of $600 million, making it the highest grossing film of 2024 to close out March.
Rounding out the top five was the Sydney Sweeney-led horror film Immaculate, which brought in another $3.2 million to bring its total to around $13 million. While it looks disappointing at first glance, the Neon-backed horror film's reported budget was only $9 million.
“Every movie counts, and the importance of each film’s performance carries a lot of weight in terms of moving the needle,” Comscore analyst Paul Dergarabedian told Variety. “The combination of ‘Dune,’ ‘Kung Fu Panda,’ ‘Ghostbusters’ and now ‘Godzilla’ has shown the power of a few key releases to turn the box office tide in a relatively short amount of time.”
It remains to be seen if the box office will be able to continue this momentum heading into April, which does not appear to have any tentpole releases on the scale of Godzilla x Kong or Dune Part 2. However, several films such as Monkey Man and Civil War already have strong word of mouth heading into their respective releases which may be enough to keep audiences heading to the movie theater.
Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire is in theaters.
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