Box Office Report: Brig-a-Dune

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | March 4, 2024 |

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | March 4, 2024 |

The spice must flow and so must the box office. It’s the week before the Oscars, and Denis Villeneue’s return to Arrakis brought in some major money. Dune: Part Two collected $81.5 million in its domestic debut from 4,071 theatres, easily securing it the top spot at the box office. Worldwide, its intake is around $178 million. It came pretty close to earning back its gargantuan $190 million budget in one week.

Dune, released in 2021, was a hit but still felt somewhat hampered by the after-effects of COVID-19 lockdown. It had its release date pushed back by almost a full year, but the gamble paid off with a $434.8 million gross, and also all those Oscars. If the sequel can keep up this kind of business, it will easily overtake its predecessor commercially. We’re now in March, and Dune: Part Two is the biggest opening weekend of the year and the largest since last October and Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour movie. Hopefully, this means we’ll get Dune Messiah at some point, although I’m also holding out for the series to run long enough that we get to see Leto II as (spoiler) the God Emperor sandworm with the weird human face. Denis, we deserve this.

As you can imagine, none of the other major studios were keen to go up against the might of the Kwisatz Haderach, so Dune Part Two pretty much had the weekend to itself. The only exception is two more episodes of the fourth season of The Chosen, the historical drama about Jesus. These TV episodes earned $3.15 million from 2,215 locations. Honestly, there are a few TV shows I would pay to see an episode or two of in the theatre. Episode eight of the return of Twin Peaks, anyone?

With the Oscars just around the corner, we saw a few of the Best Picture contenders get a boost as their distributors pushed them back into a couple hundred extra cinemas. So, The Zone of Interest got a 26% increase from last week, bringing its domestic gross to over $7.8 million. The Holdovers got a 144% jump and is now sitting at $20.1 million. Meanwhile, Oppenheimer, the little movie that could, is still playing in 453 theatres after 33 weeks of release. Its domestic total? $329,128,200.

This coming week sees the release of Kung Fu Panda 4, horror film Imaginary, and the Peter Dinklage-starring drama American Dreamer.

You can check out the rest of the weekend box office here.