Civil War Makes Box Office History

This sum is the best ever in previews for an A24 movie, more than double the $1.3 million Hereditary made in its previews in 2018. According to insiders, the movie is well on its way toward a $20 million opening weekend, with estimates going as low as $15 million and as high as $24 million. An opening in the upper range could dethrone Warner Bros.’s Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire, though it will have to make more than $80 million this weekend in order to top the box office.

Based on the preview haul alone, Civil War seems to be on the right path. Considering that it’s the priciest A24 movie thus far—its production budget was around $50 million—it will need all the help it can get at the box office. Given that it performed way better with the critics than the aforementioned Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire, recuperating its budget and making some additional money on the side isn’t that hard to imagine.

But it’s still too early to tell; according to unverified sources, A24 already had $2 million in the bank from Civil War advance tickets outside of the preview haul. For those who haven’t seen the trailers and the previews, a rapidly escalating multiparty civil war engulfs all of the United States, which has become a dystopian dictatorship under its President, who is serving his third term. Kristen Dunst, Wagner Moura, and Cailee Spaeny are wartime journalists who travel to Washington, D.C., in the midst of a deadly civil war.

In Civil War, California and Texas joined together as Western Forces, while other loyalist states clung together and defended from their attacks. The cast includes Nick Offerman as the U.S. president, Stephen McKinley Henderson, Jesse Plemons, and more. Critics called the movie a clarion call, with the movie’s narrative focusing more on what happens once the nation walks blindly into self-destruction instead of acknowledging how it got there in the first place. True, the violence and the explosion-heavy scenes help convey the message more clearly.

Well, it would seem that this weekend’s box office is going to be at war as well. Besides Civil War, there’s also the aforementioned Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire, Dev Patel’s Monkey Man, Sony’s Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, First Omen, and the highly-praised Dune: Part Two. The latter is currently ending its sixth week at the box office with $10 million, adding to a grand total of $667.5 million worldwide—according to Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros., nobody expected it to be this successful.