If people are wondering how these numbers have made records, it’s because it’s recorded for a videogame movie and Sonic is not done chasing those sweet box office rings.
Sonic had a strong weekend, having $57 million on the box office for the first three days, beating Warner Bros. and Legendary’s Pokemon: Detective Pikachu which garnered over $54 million and has become the best opening on the box office for a videogame adaptation.
This record is a huge win for Paramount after bombing the box office with Terminator: Dark Fate and Gemini Man being duds, they have stabilized and are now back on track. Sonic’s four-day projections have exploded during the weekends to over $68 million two days ago according to Paramount.
Other cool statistics implied that Sonic the Hedgehog is the second-best 3-day domestic debut for actor Jim Carrey, the best one being Bruce Almighty having $67 million.
Paramount’s Domestic Distribution boss Chris Aronson shared that Sonic’s continuous success isn’t just attributed to it being a kid’s movie because based on the film’s split between audiences, 51% being the general audience and 49% being families. 44% of the audiences also said that they felt the movie exceeded their expectations for it.
Paramount seems to be headed on an upward slope finally, with A Quiet Place II that will premiere in March and The Spongebob Movie: Sponge on the Run coming this May along with the highly anticipated sequel to 80s blockbuster hit Top Gun with Top Gun Maverick coming at the end of June, the film studio can finally breathe a sigh of relief.
Aronson also thanked the people behind the film like Jim Gianopulos, Toru Nakahara and Neal Moritz for helping Paramount get back on track after a rough year to be one of the best studios in Hollywood.
Videogame films have always had trouble when they are made, the perfect example of which was the huge blunder that Super Mario Brothers movie in 1993 had at the time, with a then-overtly expensive $48 million budget and only having $21 million in the domestic box office. Another example, a more recent one, was the $160 million Warcraft film adaptation which, lucky for them was saved by the Chinese box office with an international gross of $439 million, way bigger than the sad $47 million it had domestically.
Film studios walk a tight line when it comes to this genre of movies given that they need to find the perfect balance of appeasing videogame fans while making the movie palatable for the general public who have little to no idea what the videogame’s story is.