After three weekends atop the domestic box office charts and plenty of broken records, Avengers: Endgame finally fell from its perch as John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum took first place with an incredibly impressive performance. But while John Wick was catching bodies and the attention of domestic audiences, our friends overseas were still trying to catch ‘em all helping Detective Pikachu to dominate the international box office.
Over the weekend, Detective Pikachu made $53.8 million from 72 foreign markets, giving it the top spot at the international box office for the second straight weekend, according to Variety. A nice $17.2 million chunk of that came from China, where Pikachu and friends have done particularly well with a $70.3 million total. Detective Pikachu also added $2.25 million from Mexico, $3.5 million from the United Kingdom, $2.1 million from Germany and debuted in Russia to $4.3 million.
Detective Pikachu’s weekend performance overseas brings it to $193.4 million internationally, which, combined with its domestic performance, totals out to a solid $287.4 million worldwide. That is testament to the power of the Pokémon brand all over the world and its viability as a future franchise/cinematic universe. Given the interest of those involved, the myriad possibilities and this continued box office success, those outcomes seem more and more likely.
John Wick may not have been able to outgun Pika power, but the hitman still collected his share of gold coins from overseas moviegoers. In the United Kingdom, John Wick 3 opened to a cool $4.6 million, followed by Russia with $3.8 million, Austalia with $2.8 million and Mexico with $2.1 million. All in all, John Wick 3 debuted in 66 markets over the weekend and made $35 million.
That puts the international opening weekend for John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum at $92 million. That’s pretty impressive considering that the first John Wick didn’t hit that number in its entire worldwide run and 2017’s John Wick: Chapter Two’s final domestic total was just over $92 million.
It may not have been enough to topple a Ryan Reynolds-voiced Pikachu with international audiences, but this is illustrative of how the organically grown John Wick franchise, which didn’t have the benefit of existing IP, is still getting bigger for Lionsgate.
Elsewhere on the weekend charts was, of course, Avengers: Endgame, which added another $46.8 million overseas to its absurd run to bring it to $1.88 billion internationally and $2.6 billion worldwide. It has now passed Avatar to become Number 2 on the domestic charts (Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ $936.6 million is almost certainly out of reach) and now trails only James Cameron’s film for the all-time international and worldwide box office crowns.
You can catch both John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum and Detective Pikachu in theaters now. Check out our 2019 Release Schedule to see all of this summer’s biggest movies and for all the latest box office coverage, stay tuned to CinemaBlend.
