Street Fighter box office prospects look strong heading into October. According to Variety, Paramount’s video game adaptation is projected to open with $25 million to $35 million from 3,500 North American theaters, which would put it ahead of three other new releases.

Variety frames the crowded weekend as a test for theater operators, who are hoping a busy slate lifts the month. Disney’s survival thriller Whalefall is pegged for second place with $10 million to $12 million from 3,065 venues. A24’s Elizabeth Holmes documentary, You Can See Everything, is aiming for $7 million to $8 million from just 800 locations, and Focus Features’ Sense and Sensibility remake is targeting $5 million to $8 million from 2,436 screens.

Will Street Fighter’s big budget pay off?

The PG-13 action-adventure carries the largest budget of the group, so it needs to hold onto audiences well past opening weekend. Legendary and Capcom co-financed the film for $82 million, with Paramount responsible only for distribution. The project started at Sony as part of Legendary’s pact with that studio and moved to Paramount after the original deal expired. Overseas, the film is projected to earn roughly $35 million from 65 markets.

Earlier Street Fighter films

This is the third live-action movie based on the Capcom series. The 1994 original, starring Jean-Claude Van Damme, earned $100 million at the box office, not adjusted for inflation. The 2009 follow-up, The Legend of Chun-Li, was a major misfire for 20th Century, bringing in just $12.8 million on a $50 million budget. The new film, directed by Kitao Sakurai and starring Noah Centineo and Andrew Koji, is set in 1993 and follows two estranged fighters recruited into a tournament where they must face each other.

Whalefall and the smaller titles

Whalefall cost $60 million, and because theater owners keep about half of ticket sales, it also needs staying power. Directed by Brian Duffield, the film follows a scuba diver played by Austin Abrams who is swallowed by a sperm whale with only one hour of oxygen left in his tank. Variety reports that reviews have been mostly positive.

You Can See Everything cost around $7 million to produce, and exhibitors believe it could become a rare breakout documentary. Variety points to Amazon MGM’s Melania, a $40 million film about first lady Melania Trump, which opened to $7.1 million from 1,778 theaters earlier this year. That was the biggest opening for a non-music or concert documentary in more than a decade. Most nonfiction films, by comparison, would be lucky to earn that much over their full runs.

Hype for the Holmes film has grown since A24 unveiled the top-secret project at the Telluride Film Festival in early September. Variety reports that comedian Nathan Fielder and Primetime filmmaker Lance Oppenheim quietly worked on the movie for more than three years. It offers a close look at the Theranos founder a month before she began an 11-year prison sentence for defrauding investors. The documentary holds a 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes.

Sense and Sensibility as counterprogramming

Sense and Sensibility carries a $25 million budget and is meant to offer an alternative to the male-skewing Street Fighter and Whalefall. Daisy Edgar-Jones and Esmé Creed-Miles star as sisters Elinor and Marianne Dashwood, who face love, loss and money trouble after they leave their family estate in Sussex. Variety notes that Ang Lee’s 1995 version, starring Emma Thompson and Kate Winslet, earned seven Oscar nominations and $135 million at the box office, not adjusted for inflation. Focus Features has also backed two more recent Austen remakes, including the 2005 Pride and Prejudice and 2020’s Emma, which was released digitally while theaters were closed during the pandemic.

The month so far has been uneven. Variety reports that Tom Cruise’s dark comedy Digger and Aaron Sorkin’s Facebook drama The Social Reckoning flopped, while Verity and Other Mommy are shaping up as modest wins. Last October hit a three-decade low amid a run of high-profile misfires, so the bar is low this time around. Whether Street Fighter can stay in theaters long enough to justify its price tag will be the real test for the franchise and for Paramount.

Quick answers

How much is Street Fighter projected to earn in its opening weekend?
According to Variety, the film is projected to open with $25 million to $35 million from 3,500 North American theaters.

How much did Street Fighter cost to make?
Legendary and Capcom co-financed the film for $82 million, with Paramount responsible only for distribution.

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Source: Variety