Box Office: Michael B. Jordan's Creed III has franchise-best opening, best ... trends now
Creed III set records for both the franchise and sports film genre in its opening weekend, garnering $58.7 million in box office revenues, according to studio estimates released on Sunday.
The highly-anticipated motion picture, starring and directed by Michael B. Jordan, played in 4,007 North American locations, far surpassing the film franchise's opening weekends in 2015 ($29 million) and 2018 ($35 million).
The MGM film pits Jordan's eponymous character Adonis Creed against his childhood friend Damian Anderson (Jonathan Majors), and also features a cast including Tessa Thompson, Wood Harris, Phylicia Rashad and Mila Davis-Kent.
The movie — which had the highest-grossing opening weekend for a sports movie, Deadline reported — is the first of all of the films in the Creed and Rocky universes not to include Sylvester Stallone, as he revealed in 2021 he was not linked to the project.
MGM head of distribution Erik Lomis told said that the film's stellar start was 'beyond all of our expectations.
The latest: Creed III, starring and directed by Michael B. Jordan, 36, set records for both the franchise and sports film genre in its opening weekend, garnering $58.7 million in box office revenues, according to studio estimates released on Sunday
The film pits Jordan's titular character Adonis Creed versus his childhood friend Damian Anderson (Jonathan Majors)
'And we knew that we had something special — we tested the movie and it tested great, but the public responded so resoundingly to it,' Lomis said. 'Everything went right here starting with the movie itself ... it was just up to us not to break it when they gave it to us and we didn't.'
The movie's stellar start was buoyed by good reviews, as it received an 87 percent Rotten Tomatoes score and an A- CinemaScore.
Exit polling indicated audiences were 63 percent male, 55 percent between the ages of 18 and 34 and culturally diverse (36 percent Black, 28 percent Latino, 23 percent white and 13 percent Asian/other).
More than 80 percent of viewers said they would definitely recommend the film to others, to which Lomis said, 'I've been doing this a long time and that's
