The Warner-Legendary Japanese remake also scored a whopping estimated $103 million from 64 international territories. The U.K. led the charge with $10.4 million, followed by Russia ($9.1 million) and Mexico ($8.9 million).
Historically, the run-up to Memorial Day weekend has been more modest given that it falls between the first weekend in May — a huge moviegoing frame — and the long holiday fray, during which a good number of schools have just commenced for the summer break.
“Anytime I beat tracking by $20 million, I’m happy,” said Warner domestic distribution prexy Dan Fellman. “That’s like a whole other movie.”
“Godzilla” benefited from massive fanboy support in the Imax and premium large-formats. The former company alone contributed 15% of the gross at $14.1 million from just 352 screens, averaging $40,057 per-screen and marking the exhib’s largest Stateside opening this year.
“When you look at what Imax did, it was clear that if you wanted to see a big monster movie, you saw it on a big screen in Imax,” Fellman added.
Other premium large-format screens contributed $8.4 million (or 9%) of the film’s opening gross, of which Cinemark (including its XD brand) led the charge with $2.2 million.