{"id":554995,"date":"2026-03-30T22:28:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T22:28:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/554995\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:28:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T22:28:11","slug":"how-high-could-project-hail-mary-climb-at-the-box-office","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/554995\/","title":{"rendered":"How High Could ‘Project Hail Mary’ Climb at the Box Office?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two weeks into its run, we have to start talking not about whether \u201cProject Hail Mary<\/a>\u201d is a hit but just how big of one. This weekend, Phil Lord and Chris Miller\u2019s sci-fi epic starring Ryan Gosling<\/a> surpassed $300 million at the global box office<\/a>, which for an original film<\/a> that\u2019s not a sequel or based on humongous IP is pretty fantastic in just two weekends. <\/p>\n

With a $200 million net production budget and marketing costs that could be as high as half that, you could argue that for Amazon MGM to really break even on this movie, it needs to make something like $600 million at the box office. But that\u2019s no longer out of the question and is likely well within reach. <\/p>\n

\""I<\/a> \"Daniel<\/a> <\/p>\n

One thing distributors like to look at week to week is a movie\u2019s holdover drop, or the percentage change from its opening weekend to the next. The less the drop from one weekend to the next, the more the film has staying power and can really see its box office rack up over the long haul. Generally, a drop of 50-60 percent is the norm for most movies, and something below that is quite good.<\/p>\n

\u201cProject Hail Mary\u201d domestically only dropped 32 percent and made another $54.5 million domestic. We said last week<\/a> that the opening weekend for \u201cProject Hail Mary\u201d was in \u201cOppenheimer\u201d territory, that only \u201cOppenheimer\u201d opened stronger for an original movie in the last 10 years. \u201cOppenheimer\u201d in its second weekend dropped 43.4 percent and made just $46.7 million domestic. <\/p>\n

The international second weekend for \u201cProject Hail Mary\u201d was even more impressive, with a 3 percent drop, bringing the international cumulative total to $136.9 million. Many markets where it played actually saw the film\u2019s performance improve week to week. And compared to movies like \u201cThe Martian\u201d (-41 percent) or \u201cInterstellar\u201d (-21 percent), international audiences are really starting to love it.<\/p>\n

Just because it had a good second week doesn\u2019t mean \u201cProject Hail Mary\u201d is going to match or surpass \u201cOppenheimer\u201d at the box office, but it\u2019s reasonable to think it could similarly leg out. \u201cOppenheimer\u201d at the end of the day made $330 million domestic and $975 million worldwide. Compared to an $82 million opening weekend, $330 million is a multiple of 4 by the end of its run. With \u201cProject Hail Mary\u201d already pacing ahead of that, that would put it around $320 million domestic.<\/p>\n

A lot then rides on the international haul, which right now is a little less than half of its overall total. But it\u2019s not out of the question to think that the other global territories can easily help push \u201cProject Hail Mary\u201d above $600 million, which would have it right around the same ballpark as \u201cThe Martian\u201d ($630 million), though that film too saw a majority chunk of its box office come from international audiences. <\/p>\n

There are some other factors that will weigh on whether \u201cProject Hail Mary\u201d can really have legs the way something like \u201cOppenheimer\u201d did. Next week it will have to come up against \u201cThe Super Mario Galaxy Movie\u201d and will certainly fall out of #1 (\u201cOppenheimer actually holds the record as the highest-grossing movie to never hit #1, thanks to \u201cBarbie\u201d). Before long, it will have to contend with \u201cMichael\u201d and \u201cThe Devil Wears Prada 2\u201d as we get into the summer, among others. The appeal of \u201cProject Hail Mary,\u201d though, is broad enough that none of those movies may truly eat into its success.<\/p>\n

For now, \u201cProject Hail Mary\u201d is the highest-grossing movie of 2026 with no signs of slowing down, and it\u2019s proving to be the type of movie Hollywood needs more of.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two weeks into its run, we have to start talking not about whether \u201cProject Hail Mary\u201d is a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":554996,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[2642,88,2695,206,155909],"class_list":["post-554995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-box-office","tag-entertainment","tag-film","tag-movies","tag-project-hail-mary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=554995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/554996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}