The upcoming DC film Blue Beetle is preparing for launch at the U.S. box office.
According to Deadline, Blue Beetle is on track to open at $30 million in the United States when it hits theaters later this month. The outlet further reports that the Warner Bros.-distributed film is tracking especially well among Latino and Hispanic moviegoers, and is currently “soaring above” Sony’s Gran Turismo in terms of unaided awareness.
Notably, Blue Beetle’s projected U.S. opening is lower than those of DC’s previous two 2023 films, The Flash ($55 million) and Shazam! Fury of the Gods ($30.1 million). However, movies aimed at Latino and Hispanic audiences are known to overindex during their opening weekends thanks to walk-up business. A very recent example of this is Meg 2: The Trench, which had a bigger-than-expected turnout thanks to those demographics.
Meg 2 itself opened at $30 million in the U.S. this past weekend. Moreover, due to the ongoing Screen Actors Guild (SAG-AFTRA) strike, it did so without any cast interviews. Blue Beetle appears to be making the best of a similar situation, surpassing Meg 2’s unaided awareness by 83 percent. Additionally, Warner Bros. is trailering Blue Beetle on all prints of its newly-minted billion-dollar movie Barbie, and on most prints of Paramount’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem. The DC film is opening against Universal’s Strays, which is itself projected to have a domestic opening in the $13-19 million range.
Blue Beetle is a groundbreaking Latino superhero film
Blue Beetle is the first major, live-action superhero movie to feature a Latino character as its main protagonist. The DC (Extended) Universe film stars Cobra Kai lead Xolo Maridueña as said protagonist, Jaime Reyes. Ángel Manuel Soto directs from a script by Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer.
The film’s official synopsis reads as follows: “Recent college grad Jaime Reyes returns home full of aspirations for his future, only to find that home is not quite as he left it. As he searches to find his purpose in the world, fate intervenes when Jaime unexpectedly finds himself in possession of an ancient relic of alien biotechnology: the Scarab. When the Scarab suddenly chooses Jaime to be its symbiotic host, he is bestowed with an incredible suit of armor capable of extraordinary and unpredictable powers, forever changing his destiny as he becomes the Super Hero BLUE BEETLE.”
Blue Beetle opens in theaters on Friday, August 18.
