Pacific Rim Screenwriter Touts Worldwide Box Office On Twitter
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It’s strange to think, but before its release, Pacific Rim was positioned to be one of the biggest movies of the summer. But after it was released in the United States, the science fiction film from Guillermo del Toro sunk like a stone, with a lukewarm critical response and middling box office grosses. So far, Pacific Rim has only taken in $97 million domestically, against a $190 million production budget. You’d think Pacific Rim was a big flop looking at the domestic box office numbers, but when you factor in how well the film performed internationally, it’s a completely different story.
At the moment, Pacific Rim has grossed $247.4 million overseas, which puts the mechs-versus-monsters movie at a $344.4 million worldwide gross. The larger picture would suggest that Pacific Rim is a very successful film, and screenwriter Travis Beacham couldn’t be happier about the news if he’d defeated a Class Five Kaiju at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. Beacham recently tweeted his love for Pacific Rim, while telling his detractors that they were completely wrong about the film.
Budget: $190m. Gross: $344m. Now I'm no math whiz, but I feel like that second number might be quite a bit bigger than the first one.
— Travis Beacham (@travisbeacham) August 12, 2013
@AndyDahm Hey we'll see. I only care insofar as it predicts a sequel. I'm unconvinced that anyone outside the studio has the math sorted.
— Travis Beacham (@travisbeacham) August 12, 2013
It might not be the classiest move on Beacham’s part, you’ve got to admire his enthusiasm for Pacific Rim. Whether or not Pacific Rim will get a sequel, at least he can say that this film was a commercial success in the long run.
A big reason why Pacific Rim was a successful film overseas was because of China’s box office numbers. When the science fiction film premiered in China last week, it opened with a $45.2 million box office opening weekend. Pacific Rim even broke last year’s The Dark Knight Rises‘ Chinese opening weekend box office gross of $32 million. If this trend continues, you can easily see why movie studios are tailoring big summer blockbusters to the Chinese market these days.
Big summer blockbuster movies like Pirates of the Caribbean, Transformers, and now Pacific Rim often play better overseas than in the States because of how simplistically they’re made. The stories are simple enough that you don’t even have to understand all of the English language to understand the film. Why stop making movies this way, if they’re super profitable? Considering Pacific Rim‘s box office performance in China, it’s more and more likely that we might get a sequel after all.
Travis Beacham and Guillermo del Toro are already working on the script for Pacific Rim 2, regardless of it officially getting a sequel or not. If no sequel is made, maybe del Toro and Beacham could release the screenplay as a graphic novel instead. The Mexican director has hinted at a few ideas we might see in Pacific Rim 2. He tossed around ideas that would involve even bigger Jaegers and Kaiju, as well as a melding of both into one terrifying monster.
It will be interesting to see how well Pacific Rim does in the home video market a few months from now. Perhaps the Blu-ray/DVD numbers will push Pacific Rim closer toward the sequel fans are hoping for, but until then, hope that Hollywood wants to make another Pacific Rim movie.
