Many scoffed when Sony Pictures unveiled Gran Turismo. Some video games are obvious candidates for a live-action adaptation, though Polyphony Digital’s venerable racing game is more focused on carefully tweaking brake bias than telling a gripping story populated with charismatic characters.
Well, someone at PlayStation Productions seems to have known what they were doing, as Gran Turismo has triumphed over Barbie and Blue Beetle to become the number one movie at the domestic box office this weekend.
But there’s a big asterisk to be appended to that fact. As pointed out by Exhibitor Relations Co. on X (formerly Twitter), Gran Turismo topped the charts despite not being the highest-grossing movie on Friday, Saturday or Sunday.
On Friday it made $3.2 million against Barbie‘s $4 million, on Saturday $4.1 million versus Barbie‘s $5.4 million, and on Sunday it came in third with $4.7 million behind both Barbie ($5.6 million) and Blue Beetle ($5.4 million).
At this point, you may be scratching your head over why Gran Turismo is celebrating being the box office champ. The answer is previews: it had an unusually long time for advance screenings, and has been on limited release since August 11. Add that $5.3 million to its total, and it triumphs over the competition.
Now, you might justifiably say it isn’t fair for a movie to add two weeks of preview revenue to its opening weekend total and be able to promote itself as “number one at the box office”, but it’s a technically correct statement (the best kind of correct).
Gran Turismo is now on wide release.
Published: Aug 29, 2023 01:16 am