It’s been a very busy time for film fans across the globe, and we should know!
While we always take pride in the quality of our work, it’s a very satisfying feeling when the figures bear that out – and three of the recent releases we’ve led the visual effects work for have stormed their way to some incredible box office success.
Venom: Let There Be Carnage
We’re proud of all the exceptional work our teams delivered for Venom: Let There Be Carnage – from bringing the titular symbiote Carnage to life to helping create the onscreen destruction and chaos of the extraterrestrial battle royale.
As a sequel to 2018’s hit Venom, expectations around this film’s box office performance were mixed – but it’s racked up an estimated $90.1 million at the North American box office for its opening weekend.
The figure makes it the biggest opening during the pandemic, and second-biggest of all time for October! It also follows in the footsteps of the original (for which DNEG delivered the VFX), which was something of an industry surprise with an $80 million opening and another October box office record in 2018.
No Time To Die
We’re just as proud of the work our teams delivered for No Time To Die, helping to craft all the action and inject even more tension into Bond’s desperate mission.
Daniel Craig’s final turn as 007 has so far broken international records with a grand total of $119 million, performing especially well in the UK at $25.6 million on its opening weekend.
For long-time Bond fans, the film has toppled box office records by grossing more during the opening weekend than any other film in the history of the franchise. Interestingly, it’s also the first Hollywood title to exceed $100 million without opening in China since the pandemic began.
The Battle at Lake Changjin
However, it was this Chinese film that took the title of the highest-grossing film anywhere in the world this weekend, with a grand total of $203 million for its opening weekend, with 157,000 screenings per day and 25.5 million ticket buyers.
It’s an exceptional figure, and a real testament to the power of the stunning battle sequences that our teams used their skill to help craft and shape.
One lesser-known fact is that it earned $12.9 million of its total from Imax giant screens – making it the third biggest Imax opening weekend of all time after The Wandering Earth and Chinese comedy Detective Chinatown 3 (which featured VFX courtesy of our sister company ReDefine, by the way).
Congratulations to all our teams that worked on these exceptional shows, and to our filmmaking partners and studio clients!