Marvel’s SHANG-CHI AND THE LEGEND OF THE TEN RINGS hit theaters over the weekend, and many wondered if audiences would show up during this strange time of Covid, especially when there’s no streaming options to watch it. There’s also the somewhat lackluster box office of Marvel’s BLACK WIDOW earlier this year, though some blamed that on the fact that Disney+ carried that film day-and-date as a streaming rental, which likely played a big part in why the box office wasn’t better. There’s actually been a number a YouTube trolling channels that were wishing for and even predicting SHANG-CHI to be a colossal failure. Well, their eating their words now, as that absolutely did not happen.
The numbers are in, and SHANG-CHI not only brought in $75.5 million in just the first three days of its domestic opening weekend, rising to $90 million thanks to the extra day (Labor Day), and earned a Worldwide gross of $146.2 million… and that’s taking into account that it’s not done opening in certain markets, including China. This means you can almost certainly expect more money to roll in. The domestic gross for opening weekend also broke a record in a big way, as the previous Labor Day weekend box office record was held by Rob Zombie’s HALLOWEEN remake, which was released fourteen years ago, and even then only grossed $30.6 million. That’s impressive, especially considering many people are still nervous about going to movie theaters right now. It also bodes well for the upcoming ETERNALS, directed by Chloe Zhao, another film those YouTube trolls are very much hoping will fail.
If you haven’t seen director Dustin Daniel Cretton’s SHANG-CHI yet, we strongly recommend you check it out, as it’s easily one of Marvel’s best so far. Simu Liu is terrific in the lead, Awkwafina is very funny and endearing in her role, and Tony Leung is a fantastic villian. It’s also very different from many of the other Marvel movies, very much setting the tone for interesting things to come in this new Phase for Marvel Studios. We’ll leave you with this rather fun Tweet from Simu Liu, in which he takes some well-deserved pleasure in proving the YouTube trolls so very wrong.
Me laughing at the people who thought we’d flop pic.twitter.com/7UoLqRXlCJ
— Simu Liu (刘思慕) (@SimuLiu) September 6, 2021
Marvel Studios’ “Shang-Chi and The Legend of The Ten Rings” stars Simu Liu as Shang-Chi, who must confront the past he thought he left behind when he is drawn into the web of the mysterious Ten Rings organization. The film also stars Tony Leung as Wenwu, Awkwafina as Shang-Chi’s friend Katy and Michelle Yeoh as Jiang Nan, as well as Fala Chen, Meng’er Zhang, Florian Munteanu and Ronny Chieng.