Ridley Scott’s Napoleon through Thursday has grossed an estimated $21M worldwide. The Apple Original Films and Sony Pictures action epic is now eyeing a $70M-$73M five-day global opening, including $40M from the international box office. Should those numbers hold, this will be well ahead of pre-weekend projections.
The Joaquin Phoenix-starrer stormed into eight overseas markets on Wednesday, including France and the UK (the latter going on a non-traditional Wednesday). On Thursday, Napoleon added 40 more markets, upping the running offshore cume to $8.9M through the first two days. Majors launching on Thursday were Oz, Brazil, Germany, Italy and Mexico – all release markets to date are opening Napoleon at No. 1. Today brings Spain, among others, on board to reach 56 hubs. In total, this weekend will rep 85% of the international footprint. Significant markets to come are China and Japan on December 1 and Korea on December 6.
Through Thursday, the top markets are the UK ($1.75M), France ($1.74M), Germany $530K, Australia ($493K), Italy ($447K) and Mexico ($424K).
The expectation is for the mature European markets to lead play.
Notably, France is seeing a strong start that’s somewhat surprising given the critical score of 2.9 on AlloCiné. Responding to the harsh reviews last week, Scott exhibited his customary swagger telling the BBC, “The French don’t even like themselves. The audience that I showed it to in Paris, they loved it.”
Napoleon world premiered in Paris on November 14 with Scott, Phoenix, Vanessa Kirby, Tahar Rahim, as well as Chairman and CEO of Sony Pictures’ Motion Picture Group, Tom Rothman.
We’ll have more throughout the weekend.