Bob Marley: One Love Scores Jamaica's Biggest Box Office Opening Day Ever
There's music in the air. Following the mammoth success of "Bohemian Rhapsody," which grossed $910.8 million at the box office following its release in 2018, studios rushed to get the ball rolling on other music biopics, and it's an investment that has mostly paid off. The latest success story is "Bob Marley: One Love," directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green ("King Richard") and starring Kingsley Ben-Adir (a.k.a. the Ken who brought his drumkit to the beach), which is continuing to dominate the six-day holiday frame after beating "Madame Web" to the No. 1 spot by a huge margin on Valentine's Day. Of particular note is its success in Marley's home nation of Jamaica, where "One Love" has scored the biggest box office opening day of all time.
By the end of Friday, its third day of release, the domestic box office total for "Bob Marley: One Love" stood at $25.3 million (per Variety). It's now tracking to gross somewhere in the $46 million range over all six days, including the upcoming President's Day holiday on Monday. Over the traditional three-day box office weekend (Friday to Sunday) it will gross an estimated $28.3 million.
That's almost exactly halfway between the opening weekends for Elton John biopic "Rocketman" ($25.7 million) and Baz Luhrmann's "Elvis" ($31.2 million). Those movies ended up grossing $195.3 million and $288.6 million, respectively, at the worldwide box office by the end of their run. But it's worth noting that both of those had preview ticket sales rolled into their opening weekend stats, inflating them slightly compared to the midweek opening for "Bob Marley: One Love." Despite that midweek debut, the Marley biopic had the biggest opening day out of all three movies.
With a production budget of $70 million, "One Love" could easily break even with a box office run along "Rocketman" lines, but it has the potential to climb much higher thanks to an equally promising start overseas.
Feeling the love all over the world
The success of "Bohemian Rhapsody" was heavily driven by overseas ticket sales, which accounted for around three-quarters of its worldwide gross. In particular, there was a strong wave of Queen fever in Japan and South Korea, which between them delivered $189.8 million. "Bohemian Rhapsody" set new box office records for the category of music biopics around the world, and early numbers for "Bob Marley: One Love" indicate we could be seeing another internationally-driven hit.
According to Deadline, "One Love" grossed $4.9 million across 10 foreign markets on its opening day, and in several of those countries secured the second-biggest opening day for a music biopic ever, behind "Bohemian Rhapsody." With a population of just 2.8 million people, the island nation of Jamaica doesn't often make enough of an impact at the box office to be included in discussions — but today is the exception. An opening day total of approximately $100,000 for "Bob Marley: One Love" has set a new all-time record for the country across all movie genres, not just music biopics.
It remains to be seen whether upcoming music biopics about Amy Winehouse ("Back in Black," starring Marisa Abela), Bob Dylan ("A Complete Unknown," set to star Timothée Chalamet), and other music icons will see this some success. But for "Bob Marley: One Love," it looks like everything's gonna be alright.