The Beetlejuice Beetlejuice box office has already grossed nearly double the original Tim Burton movie. Burton has returned for the legacy sequel to his iconic horror comedy, which features the return of Michael Keaton as Betelgeuse, Winona Ryder as Lydia Deetz, and Catherine O’Hara as Delia Deetz in addition to re-teaming the director with Wednesday star Jenna Ortega. The Beetlejuice Beetlejuice box office had big shoes to fill, as the original movie was the 10th highest-grossing movie of 1988 worldwide, grossing roughly $75 million.
Warner Bros. Discovery has reported that the worldwide opening weekend for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is projected to reach a total of $145.4 million by the end of Sunday. This comes from a total of $110 million at the domestic box office and an additional $35.4 million from 69 other territories, representing 75% of the movie’s international business. This total means that the movie has nearly doubled the entire run of the 1988 original in the span of just three days.
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice is the No. 1 movie worldwide, domestically, and internationally this weekend, as well as in 40 individual international markets. The movie has yet to open in several key markets as well. Among the seven markets opening next week are France and Germany, and Japan is set to be the last market in which the movie debuts, on September 27.
What This Global Debut Means For Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
The Legacy Sequel Is Set To Be A Major Hit
This whopping global debut shows that the Beetlejuice Beetlejuice release has a strong chance of becoming a major hit in spite of the fact that it comes with an large reported budget of $100 million, a significant increase from the original movie. Because a movie generally needs to earn back between two and two-and-a-half times its budget in order to turn a profit, its break-even point is likely somewhere around $250 million or more. However, the new release is already well on its way toward ending up in the black, and then some.
The production budget of the original Beetlejuice was only $15 million.
However, the fact that the international sum is so much lower than the movie’s domestic debut shows that the movie is likely to perform much better in North America overall than in international markets. This is perhaps due to the fact that the era of Tim Burton movies to which this movie hearkens back, which includes the original Beetlejuice and his follow-up Edward Scissorhands, did not receive robust international releases at the time and likely do not have strong bases of nostalgia overseas, meaning that demand for this kind of legacy sequel is much stronger in the movie’s home territory.
Our Take On The Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Global Debut
The Movie Is A Legacy Sequel Success
Even without the international grosses matching its domestic haul, the movie’s global debut was so strong that it would not be a surprise if the Beetlejuice Beetlejuice cast were to reunite sooner than later for another installment. While that remains to be seen, the movie has become the Top: Gun Maverick of the horror-comedy realm, performing miraculously well both commercially and critically (on Rotten Tomatoes it is Certified Fresh with a 77% score) despite being the first follow-up to a movie that was released more than three and a half decades earlier.
Source: Warner Bros. Discovery
