Street Fighter Leads the Box Office With a $51 Million Global Opening as Whalefall Sinks With $17.5 Million

Paramount and Legendary’s live-action Street Fighter adaptation topped the North American box office in its opening weekend, while 20th Century Studios’ survival thriller Whalefall struggled to find an audience despite a warmer critical reception.

Street Fighter Wins the Weekend, But Not by a Knockout

Street Fighter opened at number one with roughly $31 million domestically and about $51 million worldwide, including around $20 million from international markets. That’s a solid but unspectacular start for the $82 million co-production between Legendary and Capcom, Street Fighter’s publisher, and it’s a notable one too: the film is the first release under Legendary’s new three-year global distribution deal with Paramount, which the two companies closed last year.

Street Fighter opened at number one in North America, led by Andrew Koji, Callina Liang, and Noah Centineo as Ryu, Chun-Li, and Ken.

The opening lines up with the split reaction the film has gotten since its first reactions arrived ahead of release. Street Fighter settled at a 45 percent Rotten Tomatoes critics score from 64 reviews, squarely in “Rotten” territory, while its audience Popcornmeter score sits far higher at 84 percent, suggesting the film is landing better with the fans who actually bought tickets than with critics. The real question now is whether Street Fighter can hold up over the coming weeks or whether it ends up frontloaded the way fellow fighting game adaptation Mortal Kombat II was earlier this year, a comparison several outlets have already raised given how steeply that film’s grosses dropped after its own decent debut.

Whalefall Gets Left Behind Despite Good Reviews

20th Century Studios’ Whalefall had a much rougher time, opening to just $17.5 million worldwide, including only about $8 million domestically, against a reported net budget of around $60 million. That’s a tough result considering the film’s reception has actually been strong, with Whalefall holding a 79 percent Rotten Tomatoes score, the kind of number that usually points to solid word of mouth rather than a steep opening weekend drop-off.

Austin Abrams stars as Jay Gardiner, a diver searching for his late father’s remains who gets swallowed by a sperm whale with about an hour of oxygen left to escape.

Directed by Brian Duffield, who also made No One Will Save You, and based on Daniel Kraus’s novel of the same name, Whalefall stars Resident Evil breakout Austin Abrams as Jay, alongside Josh Brolin as his father Mitt, Elisabeth Shue as his mother Zara, Jane Levy as Eva, Emily Rudd as Nan, and John Ortiz as Hewey. The film leans on practical, claustrophobic survival horror rather than franchise name recognition, and it’s exactly the kind of well-reviewed original that studios hope breaks out through word of mouth over its first few weeks, rather than living or dying on opening weekend alone.

A Weekend of Contrasts

Put side by side, the weekend tells two different stories: a big-budget video game adaptation that won on name recognition despite a rough critical reception, and a cheaper original thriller that critics liked more but audiences showed up for far less. With Street Fighter’s long-term performance still an open question and Whalefall needing strong legs just to approach its budget, both films will be worth watching over the next few weekends.

Keep the adventure going! Check out more Movies & Shows News on Gamersuniverse.

Picture Source: Paramount Pictures Australia (YouTube), 20th Century Studios (YouTube)