Things could still go south for Aquaman, but so far, James Wan’s pic is looking to be exactly the hit that the DCEU needs right now, and as the film begins to wrap up its first weekend in North American theaters, the numbers are turning out to be very impressive indeed.
As we predicted would happen yesterday, Arthur Curry’s solo outing has swam right to the top of the box office, earning $67.4 million on home turf to bring its domestic haul to $72.1 million. Combine that with its current international total of $410.7 million – thanks in large part to its dominance in the China market – and Aquaman now has a whopping $482.8 million under its belt. Which is pretty impressive when you consider that Justice League finished with $657.9 million and cost a lot more to produce. Not to mention it also featured iconic DC heroes like Batman and Superman.
Of course, Aquaman has also found itself with more praise from critics than you’d normally expect for a DCEU movie, with the film currently rated 63% on Rotten Tomatoes. True, that’s a far cry from Wonder Woman‘s figure of 93%, but Warner Bros.’ cinematic universe’s next highest scorer is Man of Steel at 56%, so Wan’s flick is hardly in a bad position all things considered.
Unless things take a drastic wrong turn, it’s looking pretty likely at this point that the pic will earn that sequel which the studio so clearly desires, whether James Wan himself is back on board or not, After all, both Jason Momoa and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II seem game to explore their respective characters further, so you can be sure that we’ll almost definitely be seeing Aquaman‘s adventure continue on the big screen in the not too distant future.