Los Angeles: In the footsteps of the Marvel superhero films released this year, Eternals raked in $9.5 million at its Thursday previews, making it the third best for the Covid era, behind Black Widow ($13.2 million) and Venom: Let There Be Carnage ($11.6 million). Its haul was ahead, though, of Shang-Chi, which had opened with $8.8 million, reports ‘Variety’.
The Chloe Zhao film starring Angelina Jolie and Salma Hayek may have got a ‘Rotten’ rating on ‘Rotten Tomatoes’, and been banned in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar because it shows gay love, but audiences forked out an estimated $19.8 million to watch it in theatres across 39 markets in its first two days.
Eternals is projected to earn a sizable $75 million on its opening weekend — Shang-Chi and Black Widow debuted at $75.4 million and $80.4 million, respectively. Black Widow was made available to rent on Disney Plus, where it pulled in $60 million, but both Shang-Chi and Eternals are having exclusive theatrical releases.
The film is being hailed as a major milestone for inclusion — its legion of heroes has Marvel’s first openly gay character and its first deaf protagonist. “It also marks director Chloe Zhao’s follow-up to her Oscar-winning ‘Nomadland’, with the filmmaker moving from smaller, auteur-like works to the big-budget confines of a comic book flick,” says ‘Variety’.