The review embargo lifts tomorrow at 8p est...
Box Office analysis
Hollywood Reporter
The reboot is counting on a strong run overseas — where Cruise still has huge sway — to make up for a probable deficit in the U.S. Case in point: 'The Mummy' scored the biggest opening day of all time in South Korea on Tuesday with $6.6 million.
Last month, early tracking for Universal’s The Mummy suggested the summer event film would debut to $40 million or so when opening in North American theaters this weekend, a tepid start for the first title in the studio's planned stable of films built around its iconic monster characters.
The forecast for the reboot has only gotten scarier from there — at least domestically. One of the industry’s most respected polling services, NRG, downgraded its projection to $38 million last week and to $35 million Monday. Such surveys can certainly be unreliable, but if NRG is correct, The Mummy will lose this weekend’s domestic box-office race to holdover Wonder Woman.
Universal insiders say The Mummy, starring Tom Cruise, will be fine thanks to the international box office, where the actor remains a huge draw. Case in point: The Mummy scored the biggest opening day of all time in South Korea on Tuesday with an estimated $6.6 million, besting the 2016 local blockbuster Train to Busan, which nabbed $6.5 million on its first day.
Directed by Alex Kurtzman, the modern-day take cost $125 million to make after tax rebates, and also stars Sofia Boutella, Russell Crowe, Annabelle Wallis, Jake Johnson and Courtney B. Vance.
"The Mummy arrives with the feel of another reboot — something audiences, especially in North America, have become all-too familiar with," says box-office analyst Jeff Bock. "It had better succeed overseas."
Bock and others predict that Wonder Woman could drop as little as 50 percent from its domestic debut this past weekend, meaning it could take in $50 million-plus for Warner Bros. and DC Entertainment.
The foreign box office is a different story, where The Mummy is expected to place No. 1 this weekend as it rolls out in most corners of the globe, including China.
It wouldn't be the first 2017 summer tentpole to see most of its treasure come from outside the U.S.: Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales has crossed the $500 million mark globally in under two weeks, thanks to a foreign haul of $393 million through Sunday.
In recent years, Cruise has enjoyed far more success overseas, outside of the Mission: Impossible series. In June 2014, Edge of Tomorrow debuted to 28.8 million in North America before topping out at $100.2 million domestically. It did nearly triple that overseas, earning a total $270.3 million for a global cume of $370.5 million. Oblivion, released in spring 2013, grossed just under $200 million internationally, compared with $89.1 million in North America.
Forbes
Its first stop was South Korea, where it set a new record for an opening day gross.
Yup, Alex Kurtzman's The Mummy, which is (hopefully) the start of Universal/Comcast Corp.'s Dark Universe cinematic uni... (sigh)... universe, set a new opening day record in South Korea. The film earned $6.6 million (kw 7.3 billion) on a single day, better that last year's Train to Busan. So, at the very least, The Mummy is a hit in at least one territory of note. While this an apples-and-oranges comparison, we should note that Train to Busan made $99m worldwide last year, including $80.4m in South Korea alone. And for what it's worth, I'm reasonably sure that The Mummy is going to make more in North America than $2.1m. So if this is a sneak peak of the film's overseas strength, the domestic figures may turn out to be glorified trivia.
As of this writing, The Mummy is probably going to make around $40-$45 million, give or take the reviews and/or how much media attention it can grab in the wake of Wonder Woman's splashy debut. We've been here before with a Tom Cruise movie, in terms of underwhelming pre-release tracking. Edge of Tomorrow couldn't move the needle past that $30m number even with great reviews (against The Fault in Our Stars), but Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation snagged a $55m debut despite $40m-ish pre-release tracking.
If the film merely does what Edge of Tomorrow did ($100m domestic, $376m worldwide), that should be okay since this film cost $125 million instead of $175m. But, as is now the case with these extended universe thingies, The Mummy can't just make money in relation to its budget and marketing costs, it has to get audiences interested in whatever comes next. Sure, the powers that be have promised that the various films would vary in terms of budget, genre, and thematic content, but if The Mummy stinks, it'll be that much harder to get audiences invested in Bill Condon's Bride of Frankenstein.
Tom Cruise movies tend to be leggy, and even if it's lousy it has an outside shot at being something of a second choice pick (no preexisting mythology, not an animated film, not R-rated, etc.) for large groups of moviegoers. I'm no fan of Brad Pitt's World War Z, but that film made $202m domestic from a $66m debut (and went on to earn $540m worldwide on a $190m budget).
