Asteroid City: How much box office money did the Wes Anderson film make during the opening weekend?

Wes Anderson's Asteroid City was released theatrically on June 23, 2023, and has been performing pretty decently at the box office. According to Box Office Mojo, the Wes Anderson directorial settled for a global tally of $16.7 million as of Sunday, June 25, 2023. The sci-fi flick is his 11th film as a director and comes two years after his critically acclaimed The French Dispatch. Box Office Mojo added that the worldwide gross is a combination of $10.2 million on the home ground and $6.5 million from international pockets.

Asteroid City first premiered at the 76th Cannes Film Festival on May 23, 2023, following which it was given a theatrical premiere on June 16, 2023. Focus Features, its distributor, opened the film in select six cinema halls where it collected $853,382, landing on the 10th at the commercial window.

As per Focus, the comedy-drama clocked the best per-theater average for any specialty film during its limited run. The firm noted the average was barely below $150,000, making the new film stand just behind La La Land (2016), which earned $176,221 from its initial limited release in five theaters.

As mentioned earlier, Asteroid City was eventually released on June 23, 2023. It engaged in a head-on collision with Jennifer Lawrence’s s*x comedy, No Hard Feelings. Both films did well despite the competition.

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Impressive feat: Asteroid City defeated Transformers: Rise of the Beasts on Friday

Box office pundits pitched Asteroid... to earn in the bracket of $7–8 million on its opening expanded weekend. According to Deadline Hollywood, the film, which hit 1675 theatres one week after the limited theatrical outing picked up $9 million in the domestic ticket window (US and Canada).

To note, the $9 million haul includes the $3.8 million earnings on the first day and $2.8 million on Saturday. The Friday earnings helped Asteroid City outperform even a franchise product like Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, which it defeated by a margin of $600,000, as per Collider.

With this debut weekend collection, Asteroid City stood in sixth place. It stood after Sony Animation’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Disney/Pixar’s Elemental, Warner Bros/DC’s The Flash, the fresh launch No Hard Feelings, and Transformers: Rise of the Beasts.

The film's box office competitor, No Hard Feelings, managed a global haul of $24.6 million. It was touted to earn $12 million in the domestic opening weekend but grabbed a slightly-better $15.1 million on the home ground. An additional $9.5 million grab from other territories aided in the promising beginning for the Gene Stupnitsky directorial.

Meanwhile, Lisa Burness, the President of Distribution at Focus Features lauded Wes Anderson's Asteroid City and its "tremendous start" during the limited theatrical run. Burness also called Anderson the "Marvel of specialty world."

“We are beyond thrilled by this weekend’s record-breaking results and the overwhelmingly positive response. Wes Anderson is a singular director with unmatched creative vision, and it is so gratifying to see adult moviegoers returning to theaters to join in on the fun of this film,” she told Deadline.

Asteroid City deals with world-changing events that “disrupt the itinerary of a Junior Stargazer/Space Cadet convention” being held in an American desert town circa 1955.

The film has an ensemble cast with stars like Jason Schwartzman, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Jeffrey Wright, Tilda Swinton, and Bryan Cranston. It also features names like Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Willem Dafoe, Margot Robbie, and Jeff Goldblum, among others.

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All films mentioned in this article are currently running in theaters.