Meg 2 Swims Past $300 Million At The Global Box Office, But Is That Enough?
Even though the movie hasn't made the biggest splash in the U.S., Warner Bros. has found a surprisingly decent late summer hit with "Meg 2: The Trench." Serving as a sequel to 2018's "The Meg" with Jason Statham returning to fight more megalodons, the blockbuster has quietly become a sizable hit overseas, particularly in China. With another big weekend in the books, the film has now passed the $300 million mark globally. The only question now is if it will have enough legs to actually become a real hit, or if it will merely avoid total disaster.
Director Ben Wheatley's "Meg 2" took in $6.73 million in its third weekend domestically, per The Numbers, as "Blue Beetle" defeated "Barbie" to take the top spot with a $25 million debut. More importantly, the creature feature added just shy of $22 million overseas, bringing its global total to $318.3 million. Nearly 80% of that total — $251.8 million, to be exact — has come from international markets, whereas North American ticket sales have only totaled $66.5 million. It's one of those examples where overseas moviegoers are going to straight-up bail this movie out, which happens from time to time (though it's been less frequent in the post-pandemic landscape).
Specifically, "The Trench" has made more than $105 million in China, making it one of the only Hollywood movies outside of "Avatar: The Way of Water" and "Godzilla vs. Kong" to make significant money in the country since the pandemic began. (Important context: This movie is actually a China-U.S. co-production, which explains a lot.) Hollywood can't really rely on China anymore, but in this case, it's probably going to be this movie's saving grace. With a $130 million budget and limited appeal stateside, Warner Bros. needs every penny outside of North America that it can get.
Overseas audiences to the rescue
The good news is that, the way things are going, "Meg 2" should finish its run closer to $400 million than $300 million. So it should be able to break even in theaters or close to it, meaning that money from VOD, Blu-ray sales, and other revenue streams should be profit. Whether or not that ends up being enough to lead to a third installment remains to be seen, but one imagines if such a thing does happen, it would be with a smaller cast and a reduced budget. Either way, this movie avoided what looked like it could be a recipe for disaster.
Critics were not kind to the sequel (to be fair, they weren't really thrilled with the first movie, either), and heading into opening weekend, it looked like that might be a nail in this film's coffin. But general audiences seem to like the movie a whole lot more than critics. More often than not, that is the far more important metric. (Just look at the "Venom" movies as proof.) Moviegoers around the world just want to see Statham fight big sharks in outlandish ways.
As it stands, "Meg 2" has a good shot at passing "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" ($376 million worldwide) to become the 13th biggest movie of 2023 overall. It's not going to match the $529 million take of the original, but the fact that this critically-panned giant shark movie is likely going to wipe out Indiana Jones is nothing if not surprising. What a time to be alive.
"Meg 2: The Trench" is in theaters now.