Spearheaded by insanely gorgeous (and criminally overlooked by the Academy) ILM VFX, Aquaman has washed away all competition over the festive period to smash through the billion dollar barrier worldwide in just 4 weeks, making it the first DCEU film to do so and passing The Dark Knight to become the second highest grossing DC film ever, just $64 million dollars behind The Dark Knight Rises in 24th place.
Now sitting on a treasure chest of $1,020,261,781, the James Wan directed film opens in Japan on 8th February, by which time there’s a good chance the film will have moved very near or past The Dark Knight Rises on its way towards the all-time top 20.
Given that all the smart money was on Mary Poppins Returns being the runaway smash over the festive period, Aquaman has proved to be the film with the best legs. Released two days before Aquaman, Poppins now has a worldwide total of $287,856,985, less than Spider-Man: Into The Spider-verse on $302,375,445 and Bumblebee on $364,769,977. That their combined totals don’t match Aquaman is a testament to the power of the Atlantean kings box office strength.
Now, if only the decision had been made to release Solo in December, a month that launched The Force Awakens, Rogue One and The Last Jedi to a combined worldwide box office total of almost four and a half billion dollars. Aquaman, Bumblebee and Spider-Man would have manoeuvred into alternate release slots, leaving Solo and Poppins to hit all demographics and rake in the dollars.
Completing a billion dollar quartet may have been too much to expect, but a haul significantly more than the $392,924,807 it finished with would have been highly likely.
