Actor Dev Patel’s directorial debut film “Monkey Man” passes a major milestone at the global box office despite facing hurdles in the domestic arena. The newly released action flick is helmed and co-produced by Patel, who also co-wrote the screenplay with Paul Angunawela and John Collee. The film has Patel playing the titular character, Kid, a young man who seeks revenge against the rich people responsible for the death of his family. The film explores themes of societal challenges, including corruption, discrimination, the caste system, poverty, and the experiences of the transgender community in India.
The movie opened in second place on its debut weekend and outranked the IP-driven horror title “The First Omen,” which was the other new release in theaters that week.
According to Deadline, “Monkey Man” had a rough time at the domestic box office in its second weekend. As mentioned, the film opened at 2 no. on its debut, but by the second weekend, it slipped to sixth place, falling out of the Top 5 completely with a 3-day total of $4.1 million despite playing in eight more theaters than the previous weekend. Though the domestic performance of “Monkey Man” wasn’t very impressive, per Collider, the movie did triumph at the global box office as it surpassed $20 million overall, reaching a cumulative total of $22 million.
Is Dev Patel’s Monkey Man a success?
“Monkey Man” marked its release on April 5, 2024, and received generally positive reviews from critics. Despite that, the movie’s domestic performance in its second week wasn’t as expected, and it even fell behind the third-weekend gross of the underperforming “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire.” Nevertheless, it could still be considered a financial success overall despite falling out of the Top 5.
In terms of profit-making, “Monkey Man” can be considered a success. An average movie needs to make twice its production budget to make a profit, which would likely place the movie’s break-even point at $20 million. In that case, “Monkey Man” has already crossed that threshold after just 10 days, which is a very good sign for the movie’s eventual worldwide run and the sequel film.
Netflix initially bought the film for $30 million during its production phase, which already accounted for its production budget. However, when the streaming giant dropped the film, it was picked up by Universal for roughly $9 million, which led to the financial dynamics shifted significantly. It also would mean that they likely only needed it to make $18 million to recoup their investment. All in all, the movie could have dropped even further down the chart and still have been considered a financial success, so any future box office it draws in will likely be pure profit on top of its solid return on investment.
