Queen Bey is about to take on the box office.
“Renaissance,” a concert film written, directed and produced by Beyoncé, is expected to bring in $17 million to $20 million in its opening weekend. The film will play in approximately 2,539 domestic locations, as well as 94 international territories, including Mexico, the U.K., South Africa, Kenya, Australia and Germany. Globally, the film is targeting $30 million to $40 million in its first weekend.
Like Taylor Swift’s “The Eras Tour,” which ignited the box office in October with $92 million domestically and has generated $250 million worldwide to date, “Renaissance” is unique because it’s being distributed by the exhibitor AMC Theatres rather than a traditional studio.
Based on early estimates and pre-sales, “Renaissance” will be more comparable to concert docs like Michael Jackson’s “This Is It,” which debuted to $23 million in 2009, and “Justin Bieber: Never Say Never,” which opened to $29.5 million in 2011, not adjusted for inflation.
Those ticket sales would represent a decent start for “Renaissance,” which does not carry the kind of budget that can hobble high-profile films. Beyoncé gets to take home roughly 50% of box office earnings, with exhibitors keeping the remaining revenues and AMC taking a small distribution fee. Of course, movie theater ticket sales won’t come close to the actual tour’s coinage, which reportedly amassed a staggering $579 million worldwide. It’s the eighth-highest-grossing tour of all time.
While “The Eras Tour” was a straightforward from-the-stage capture of Swift’s concert, Beyoncé takes more of a documentary approach that brings audiences behind the curtain of her latest stadium tour, with appearances from Jay-Z and Blue Ivy, as well as Diana Ross and Megan Thee Stallion. Variety’s Steven J. Horowitz praised the documentary as “satisfying without being indulgent, but most of all, it’s a monument to Beyoncé’s status as one of pop’s most enduring figures, and everything it takes to get there.”
Depending on the power of the BeyHive, the nickname for Beyoncé’s devoted fanbase, “Renaissance” will contend for the top spot on box office charts. It’ll be a race between Thanksgiving leftovers such as “Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” and Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon.”
Lionsgate’s “Silent Night,” an action film with zero dialogue, also opens this weekend and is projecting a single-digit debut around $6 million to $8 million. Hong Kong filmmaker John Woo directed the film, which is his first American feature since 2003’s “Paycheck.” Joel Kinnaman stars as a family man who descends into the underworld to avenge his young son’s death on Christmas Eve.
Critics have been mixed on “Silent Night,” with some writing off the silent film as a gimmick and others praising the sleak action. Variety’s chief film critic Peter Debruge more favorably called the movie “one of the few bloody Christmas counterprogrammers since ‘Die Hard’ that feels worthy of repeat viewing down the road.”