As the headline suggests, xXx: Return of Xander Cage continued to be an overseas monster. The Vin Diesel/Donnie Yen/Kris Wu/Deepika Padukone action sequel bombed in North America with just $43.5 million thus far (less then first xXx's $44m opening weekend back in 2002) but went nuts in China last week. The film has now earned $134m (from a $61m debut weekend) meaning it is leggier than most Hollywood releases.
The $85 million Paramount/Viacom Inc. release has now earned $263m overseas alone (the original xXx earned $277m worldwide in total) for a $308m-and-counting global cume. So yeah, it's a hit.
And it's technically 2017's biggest grossing movie (Your Name, which has earned $327 million worldwide, opened in Japan back in August of 2016). Obviously Universal/Comcast Corp.'s Fifty Shades Darker and Warner Bros./Time Warner Inc.'s The LEGO Batman Movie will presumably pass it in the end, and the flurry of March biggies (20th Century Fox's Logan, Walt Disney's Beauty and the Beast, Paramount/Viacom Inc.'s Ghost in the Shell) will presumably push it further down the list, but for one goofy moment, xXx 3 is the year's top global grosser.
With a solid hold like that, and with Japan on the way next weekend, this is a solid and indisputable winner thanks to overseas muscle. That it was a surprisingly fun movie is arguably a bonus. The next question is, to paraphrase my favorite Moana song, how far it'll go. It opens in Japan next weekend but also faces steep competition in China from Resident Evil: The Final Chapter and Assassin's Creed next Friday.
Obviously, the goal is probably anything over $340 million which would put it at 4x the production budget. As for a sequel, I'm inclined to say "sure" since the film ends with a relatively crowd-pleasing ensemble already in place for the next go-around, but you have to keep the budget below $100m. Unlike Warcraft, xXx: Return of Xander Cage was cheap enough to be a big win at over $300m worldwide. So you want to maintain a situation where it doesn't have to break records to break even.
Speaking of which, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter has now earned $121 million overseas for a not-bad $147m worldwide cume (on a $40m budget). To wit, that's pennies away from the $148m global cume of Resident Evil: Extinction (part 3) back in 2007, so now it's just a question of whether it can approach the $240m total of Resident Evil: Retribution in 2012 or (however unlikely) the $300m worldwide total of and Resident Evil: Afterlife in 2010.
Also making a would-be final stand in China next Friday is Assassin's Creed, which has earned $212 million worldwide thus far on a way-too-expensive $125m budget. The Michael Fassbender video game adaptation also opens in Japan in early March.
