In a welcome act of transparency, the Walt Disney Company has announced both the box-office and PVOD numbers for the opening weekend of its Marvel Studios title “Black Widow”.
The Scarlett Johansson-led film will soar to a gross of nearly $220 million worldwide in its opening weekend. Broken down, the film pulled in $80 million in domestic U.S. box-office, $78 million in international box-office, and over $60 million in Disney+ Premier Access direct consumer spending globally (the majority of which was U.S. domestic).
This marks the first time that Disney has released dollar figures about how a film has done on its Disney+ service and, unlike box-office, Disney retains all of that revenue stream.
The $80M kick-off marks the largest domestic opening weekend box-office since “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker” in December 2019, easily coming in ahead of “F9: The Fast Saga” a few weeks ago.
That said, the film saw a 41% drop on Saturday, big for an MCU title (which generally falls in the mid-teens). That is being attributed to the Disney+ option as the Marvel fans front-loaded the opening, showing up on Thursday and Friday, while on Saturday the more regular moviegoers and walk-up crowds opted to stay and watch from home.
Source: Deadline