Fede Álvarez’s Alien: Romulus bit off a strong $6.5 million in Thursday previews, putting the highly anticipated August event on course to open to a better-than-expected $40 million-plus in another win for the Disney film empire and the summer box office overall.
20th Century and Disney held reviews until this week, a strategy that has paid off. The movie sports a fresh 82 percent critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes, which could succeed in broadening out the beyond older males, which are the target audience who grew up the storied franchise.
The eighth installment in the long-running Alien franchise is set between the events of Ridley Scott’s 1979 Alien and James Cameron’s 1986 sequel Aliens. (Scott is a producer on Romulus.)
The R-rated movie tells the story of young colonists who come across a derelict space station and encounter the horror of the alien creature that is the enduring star of the franchise. The film stars Cailee Spaeny, David Jonsson, Archie Renaux, Isabela Merced and Spike Fearn.
Romulus was originally slated to go straigh to streaming and debut on the Disney-owned on Hulu, but the studio shifted to theatrical at the start of principal photography. “Right when we started shooting it, the studio was like, ‘Fuck it, we’re going into theaters with this,’” Álvarez told The Hollywood Reporter in an in-depth interview in March.
The film opens in theaters everywhere Friday, as well as across the world.
More to come.
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