Pokémon: Detective Pikachu earned $2.7 million on Thursday on its seventh day of domestic release. That brings the Legendary and Warner Bros. release up to $69.3 million and gives it an okay (but not superlative) 1.27x weekend-to-first-week multiplier. To be fair, it’s about as leggy as Rampage which eventually had a solid 43% drop in weekend two. The question heading into this weekend is whether or not Warner Bros. and friends can convince older kids and adults to take a chance on a kid-friendly, PG-rated Pokémon flick. Truth be told, John Wick: Chapter 3 potentially over performing this weekend (a $5.9 million Thursday gross) may put a wrinkle in that plan. Nonetheless, a 50% drop ($27 million) still gets Detective Pikachu to $97 million by Sunday night.
It’ll pass the unadjusted domestic gross of Mortal Kombat ($70 million in 1995) by the end of this sentence while passing Pokémon: The First Movie ($85 million in 1999) and Prince of Persia ($90 million in 2010) by Sunday night. After that, it’s into the rarified (for a video game movie) $100 million-plus club, as even a severe slowdown will put it past the unadjusted $131 million gross of Tomb Raider (in 2001) to become, sans inflation, the biggest video game movie ever in North America. So, inflation and all, it’s almost certain to top a record that has stood for nearly 18 years. There have been 33 video game movies between Tomb Raider and Detective Pikachu, and none of them came anywhere near that $131 million figure.
Still, WB didn’t agree to distribute Legendry’s $150 million-budgeted comic fantasy just to sell about as many tickets in North America as that aforementioned Mortal Kombat flick ($145 million adjusted for inflation). The hope was that the Ryan Reynolds/Justice Smith flick would take off overseas as well. A mixed reception in China (a $40 million debut weekend) put a damper on hopes of global domination, but it’s still going to make a run at topping Rampage ($428 million last year) and Warcraft ($433 million) to be the biggest video game movie ever globally. At the very least, it’s now, with $142 million overseas, one of just 12 video game movies to pass $200 million global with $211 million.
If it continues at a 32/68 pace, it’ll earn around $27 million domestic, $55 million overseas for an over/under $295 million global cume. That’s presuming it falls like a “normal” biggie and not a kid-friendly flick (or a toon) which could mean longer legs. Once it passes $275 million global, it’ll be behind only Resident Evil: Afterlife ($300 million in 2010), Resident Evil: The Final Chapter ($312 million in 2017), Prince of Persia ($330 million in 2010), Angry Birds ($352 million in 2016), Rampage ($428 million in 2016) and Warcraft ($433 million).
So, yes, barring a hard collapse this weekend, it is still on pace to become the biggest video game movie of all time by the time it exits theaters. And if it ends up with (spitball math) $150 million domestic and $450 million worldwide (which is about breakeven for the pricey feature), it’ll be an exception to the rule in terms of video game movies, both in terms of cracking $450 million and in terms of making 1/3 of its money in North America alone. The vast majority of the big video game movies made around 75-80% of their money overseas. Once again, a lower-than-expected run in China (presuming it doesn’t leg out this week) will skew the numbers both in raw grosses and in domestic/overseas splits.
