Despite receiving an overwhelming amount of negative advance critics' reviews this week, Neil Marshall's cinematic reboot of Hellboy still had an impressive opening night.
The Dark Horse Comics adaptation earned $1.4 million domestically in Thursday night preview screenings and is projected to earn anywhere from $16-20 million at the domestic box office its opening weekend.
Considering the film currently has a 12 percent on review aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes, this is a fairly impressive opening night for the film. The reboot has a reported production budget of $50 million, not including marketing or distribution costs, meaning box office earnings of at least $100 million would likely be needed for the Lionsgate film just to break even.
With this in mind, Hellboy is not expected to take the top spot at the domestic box office its opening weekend, with Shazam!, in its second weekend, projected to earn anywhere from $24-30 million domestically to retain the top spot.
Now in theaters, director Neil Marshall’s Hellboy stars David Harbour as Hellboy, Ian McShane as Trevor Bruttenholm, Milla Jovovich as Nimue, Sasha Lane as Alice Monaghan, Penelope Mitchell as Ganeida and Daniel Dae Kim as Ben Daimio.
(via Variety)