‘Bullet Train’ To Chug Summer Box Office To Last Hurrah With $60M Global Start | Watch Trailer
Sony is pulling in Bullet Train, the last big tentpole of a summer that has grossed $2.9 billion domestic through the end of July per Comscore, +142% from the same pandemic period a year ago, but off 17% from the May-July summer frame in 2019.
As reported by Deadline, July alone clocked $1.1 billion, the first billion dollar-plus grossing month since December 2019. However, after Bullet Train‘s start, get ready for a two-and-half month dry period that’s greatly lacking mass-appealing films, but crowded with adult counter-programming.
Worldwide estimates for Bullet Train are at $60M with at least $30M stateside for the Brad Pitt starring, David Leitch directed R-rated 87 North film.
Even though the Rotten Tomatoes’ critics score is low on the film at 58%, the hope is that good word of mouth off the RT audience score will trigger an overindexing here for the feature take of Kōtarō Isaka’s 2010 thriller novel.
Bullet Train follows several hitmen aboard a Tohoku Shinkansen Hayate train and also stars Joey King, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Brian Tyree Henry, Michael Shannon, Bad Bunny, Zazie Beetz, Masi Oka, Andrew Koji, Hiroyuki Sanada and Sandra Bullock. The movie shot during the pandemic, cost a reported $90M before P&A.
Watch trailer 1 below.
Leitch has played the late summer period before with Focus Features’ Charlize Theron’s Atomic Blonde in 2017 with an $18.2M domestic start as well as the Universal Fast & Furious spinoff Hobbs & Shaw which opened to $60M in early August 2019.
Atomic Blonde was positioned to arthouses when it opened, and closed at $51.6M domestic, while Hobbs & Shaw did $174M. Deadpool 2 remains Leitch’s highest grossing movie as a director both in the US/Canada ($325M) and worldwide ($786M).
Watch the trailer 2 below.
