Blue Beetle Box Office Opening: $13-30M?

Blue Beetle, starring Xolo Maridueña, is slated to open next week, and the box office predictions are all over the place.

The flick follows the disaster known as The Flash and none of the DC movies have been doing all that well for quite some time.

Blue Beetle is also an unknown character to the general public and the first superhero movie featuring a Latino actor and character in the lead.

Update: Blue Beetle opened with a $25.5 million box office.

So what do the estimates offer?

Box Office Pro says Blue Beetle will open anywhere from a low of $13 million to a high of $18 million (which would be a complete embarrassment).

However, Deadline, offers quite a different prediction and says Blue Beetle is tracking with an eye on a $30 million and points to how the Hispanic and Latino audience can over-index as they did for The Meg 2, which opened better than expected (and better than TMNT; however, TMNT actually might have more in common with Blue Beetle than The Meg 2).

Xolo Maridueña and his sister outside of the #BlueBeetle banners in Times Square. ❤️

[Posted by Xolo's sister] pic.twitter.com/sRpnvQhT6q

— Home of DCU (@homeofdcu) August 2, 2023

Hispanic and Latino audiences may show up

Deadline also notes that the $30 million project for Blue Beetle is right in line with Robert Rodriguez’s Alita: Battle Angel, so that means the Hispanic and Latino audience may come out in support of the DC movie.

The site also says that Blue Beetle is tracking ahead of both The Meg 2 and Alita: Battle Angel in terms of unaided awareness, which means the audience is more familiar with and able to recognize Blue Beetle without any prompting or assistance or promotion; so that obviously might mean since the character has more recognition or familiarity, the better the box office turn out will be.

What about the competition?

Blue Beetle does have some competition in the form of Universal’s Strays an R-rated comedy starring Will Ferrell and Jamie Foxx as stray dogs, but I’ll be honest, I only first heard of the flick just this week from a promo e-mail from Universal. Deadline also adds Strays is expected to open in the teens, so the flick is probably nothing to worry about.

What could be something to worry about is Barbie, also from WB, which has been crushing the box office and could easily top the box office for a fourth week in a row.

Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is still up in IMAX and is something that has been extended from when it was supposed to end on Blue Beetle‘s Thursday preview night, but instead, and due to high demand, Oppenheimer in IMAX will run until Aug. 31 and then Denzel Washington’s The Equalizer 3 takes over IMAX. So that means no Blue Beetle IMAX release.

I also am not expecting big things with the new TMNT animated movie in its second weekend, as again its first weekend underperformed, and I am also not expecting much for week two from The Meg 2 which opened at $30M.

I think if word of mouth gets out that Blue Beetle is a good movie, it will help with the box office immensely but they need to fill seats first.

Blue Beetle opens Aug. 18 directed by Angel Manuel Soto, with tickets now on sale.