Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s earthquake actioner was Hollywood’s last live-action original to earn even $450 million worldwide despite being “just a movie.”
Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s earthquake actioner was Hollywood’s last live-action original to earn even $450 million worldwide despite being “just a movie.”
As we wait word about whether Warner Bros. will actually release Chris Nolan’s Tenet in theaters as scheduled six weeks from tonight, and as we continue to speculate as to whether audiences here and abroad will actually show up, it’s worth noting, that it could underperform in relation to its alleged $205 million budget, and still reach a (somewhat arbitrary) milestone. If it passes even $500 million in worldwide earnings, it will be the first wholly original live-action Hollywood movie to do since, well, Chris Nolan’s Interstellar which grossed $677 millionin 2014. The closest we’ve had since then, Dwayne Johnson’s San Andreas, opened five years ago last week. It earned $474 million in unadjusted global grosses, including $155 million in North America, becoming the last original live-action Hollywood flick to earn even $450 million worldwide.
The film opened not with the over/under $45 million projected at the time but $55 million in the first three days. It would leg out, relatively speaking, to $155 million, becoming Warner Bros.’ biggest grosser in North America (just ahead of Mad Max: Fury Road’s $153 million cume) and worldwide (way ahead of Fury Road’s $374 million). Of note, George Miller’s modern classic didn’t play in China, while San Andreas earned a rock-solid (no pun intended) $103 million over there. It was a big hit because it performed well both in China and North America alongside the rest of the world. Dwayne Johnson’s (inferior) $125 million Die Hard + Towering Inferno homage Skyscraper earned $98 million in China three summers later but bombed everywhere else ($68 million domestic) and was a miss at $308 million global.
As I wrote five years ago, the Dwayne Johnson-starring “Look out, earthquake!” actioner lacked the heartbreaking humanism of Titanic, the terrifying symbolism of War of the Worlds, and the poignant “Chiwetel Ejiofor vs. Oliver Platt” moral debates of 2012. Yet writer Carlton Cuse and director Brad Peyton’s San Andreas offered plenty of massively-scaled earthquake sequences, completely with PG-13 carnage that made Man of Steel look restrained. The film worked as intended, even if it became an unintentional comedy as Johnson’s rescuer worker is so laser-focused on rescuing his ex-wife (Carla Gugino) and daughter (Alexandra Daddario) that he saves essentially zero civilians from earthquake-related peril even while operating a rescue chopper and arguably serving in an official capacity.
