Pokémon: Detective Pikachu has concluded its first weekend in the box office and it has had the best opening weekend of any video game movie adaptation.
The results are in and Detective Pikachu brought in respectable numbers at the box office during its opening weekend. According to Box Office Mojo, Detective Pikachu brought in around $58 million at the domestic box office, putting it second behind Avengers: Endgame, which is in its third week of release.
The numbers brought in by Detective Pikachu have given it the best opening weekend of any movie adaptation of a video game. Detective Pikachu has taken the top spot away from Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, which was the previous record holder with $47.7 million made during its opening weekend.
The international numbers for Detective Pikachu are even more impressive, as it has brought in an additional $112 million in the foreign markets during its opening weekend, which brings the overall total to an estimated $170 million.
The question now is whether Detective Pikachu will make a profit or not. The movie has a production budget of $150 million, but that number doesn't take into account marketing costs, which can sometimes equal (or be greater than) the production costs. Detective Pikachu has already made back its production budget in its first weekend, but the question now is whether it will hold its momentum in order to be able to clear its total budget and actually make a profit.
A sequel to Detective Pikachu has already been greenlit, which means that Legendary Pictures is clearly confident in the movie's prospects. It would take a catastrophic failure at the box office in order to stop the sequel going forward and that doesn't seem to be the case based on the opening weekend numbers.
There are reviewers who are saying that Detective Pikachu has broken the video game movie curse and has made something truly special, so it's worth rooting for the movie to succeed. The video game curse seems to be broken... for the moment, as the Sonic the Hedgehog movie is likely to reinstate it when it's released this November.
Pokémon: Detective Pikachu is in theaters now.