Mickey 17 has broken a major box office record for South Korean director Bong Joon Ho. The movie, which is based on the Edward Ashton novel Mickey7, stars Robert Pattinson as multiple clones of the impoverished Mickey, who are used as disposable test subjects to study the dangers of a new planet upon which a human colony is being developed. The Mickey 17 release comes half a decade after the filmmaker’s previous directorial effort, which was the Best Picture winner Parasite.

Per Variety, as of Sunday morning, Mickey 17 is projected to earn a 3-day total of $19.1 million by the end of its opening weekend at the domestic box office. This marks the best opening weekend that any Bong Joon Ho movie has earned in North America. It also draws close to the best opening weekend for the director in any region, rivaling the $20.7 million debut that Parasite earned in South Korea.

What This Means For Mickey 17

It Is A Huge Standout

This record is an important achievement, because – while North America does not always necessarily embrace movies in other languages – several other Bong Joon Ho movies have also been English-language releases, so the performance of Mickey 17 still shows a solid improvement. While those movies have also generally debuted in limited release, even their wide expansions have been unable to compare to the performance of the new Pattinson movie. Below, see a breakdown of how the director’s previous theatrical releases have performed in their domestic debuts, both in their first-ever weekends and their wide expansions where applicable:

Even when compared against the best weekend for any domestic Bong Joon Ho release, which is the Presidents’ Day weekend performance of Parasite, when it earned $6.6 million over the course of four days in 2,001 theaters, Mickey 17 comes in with a total that is nearly triple that haul. While part of this is due to the fact that it is by far his widest release yet, the reason the movie earned such a wide release is because of the tremendous performance of Parasite, which grossed $258.1 million worldwide.

Our Take On The Mickey 17 Debut

It Still Probably Won’t Make Its Money Back

Unfortunately, in spite of this record-breaking opening weekend and the fact that glowing Mickey 17 reviews have earned the Bong Joon Ho movie a Certified Fresh score of 79% on Rotten Tomatoes, this total still likely won’t be enough for the movie to break even. It boasts a hugely risky budget of $118 million, which most likely means that it will need to gross more than $295 million in order to turn a profit, which is a total that this debut would not indicate is anywhere within the realm of possibility.

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Source: Variety