‘Dune’ $40M+ Domestic Opening Is Best For Warner Bros HBO Max Day/Date Title & Denis Villeneuve
DUNE: Dune has easily become Denis Villeneuve’s biggest domestic opening at the box office and the best start for Warner Bros. and an HBO Max day-and-date title with $40.1M. Business was actually better than many had anticipated for Saturday, -22% from Friday with $13.7M sending the Frank Herbert feature adaptation ahead of tracking’s opening forecast of $30M-$35M. This is also the 8th film from Warners to open at No. 1 this year.
RelishMix says that Dune‘s social media across YouTube views, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram stood at 474.1M before opening, “2X the genre norm, fueled by re-starts of campaign — plus the effect of the well activated cast at 41% of the reach”. On Facebook, Warners took an organic approach to video engagement by posting 41 trailers and clips for 2.5M views which began on Sept. 8, 2020 pausing and then rebooting 13 weeks ago. Over on YouTube, the 8 views have clocked a healthy 206.7M views and a viral rate twice the norm too, at 40:1. Added to the triangulation of WB Pictures at 57.8M and HBO Max at 4.1M is the robust Legendary studios’ social media universe of 2.4M which runs strong activity with trailers in the wake of Godzilla vs. Kong — and strong international engagement with an added set of 5 YouTube videos. Not only were the cast posting Dune materials, but below the line folks as well, i.e. composer Hans Zimmer with a #DuneMovieDuet challenge on TikTok. In the mix across YouTube are 21 Zimmer soundtrack components which were dropped 4 weeks ago on the Warner Bros’ WaterTower channel. DP Greig Fraser shot loads of stills seen on his Instagram to 68K fans mixed in with The Batman.
“Casting impact scores solid points at 199.2M with 41% of the social media awareness with both Zendaya at 147.3M and Timothee Chalamet at 15.4M, who are off-the-charts in terms of fan engagement on their carefully timed posts of trailers, posters and red carpet moments in the range of 2-7M likes per post,” says RelishMix.
“Impressively for Zendaya, while she has significant fashion deals, she still supports her film projects across here social network. Dune reunites Villeneuve with Dave Bautista at 15.1M after their journey in Blade Runner 2049. Also activated are Jason Momoa at 16.1M, Josh Brolin at 3M, Rebecca Ferguson at 402K and David Dastmalchian at 298K. Villeneuve is non-social,” adds the social media analytics corp.
Any fan starving for a Dune videogame, well, you can find it over on Fortnite which the studio partnered with:
Chalamet celebrating the openings of Dune and French Dispatch this weekend:
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