It’s official. Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings have beaten out Black Widow to become the biggest movie of the year. Due to the suppressed 2020 Box Office, this also makes it the highest-grossing domestic release of the pandemic. We asked Brandon Blake, cinema aficionado and entertainment attorney Los Angeles, to break this announcement down for us.
Brandon Blake- The Entertainment Lawyer and Managing Partner Los Angeles
What’s most notable between the two films is the differing release strategies. Black Widow kept a hybrid release model that saw its debut near-concurrently with its cinema release. Although it pulled in over $125M at the day’s end, we saw a lot of kickback both from theaters and actors about the strategy, plus we saw the movie’s Box Office profits drop off very fast due to it.
Shang-Chi, on the other hand, had a traditional theatrical-exclusive release over the Labor Day weekend. While there were some complaints initially from the cast, who believed this would damage the film’s audience-pulling ability, the opposite turned out to be true. The film has stayed at the top of the Box Office for 3 weekends and is still going strong. Notably, it’s been pirated less than Black Widow, too, undoubtedly because of the theater-only release. As of September 24th, it overtook Black Widow to become 2021’s highest-grossing movie, with over $190M in takings. It moves to stream access through Disney from November 12th.
How long it will hold the top spot we can’t know. There are some notable tentpoles soon to be released, not least of which is Venom 2 and the much-anticipated Spiderman: No Way Home. However, while it may not end 2021 in the number 1 spot, this is still a remarkable pandemic achievement, especially for such a new installment in the MCU’s extended Avenger-verse.
