Pacific Rim Was the Highest Grossing Original Live-Action Film of This Summer

I don’t mean to beat a dead kaiju (with a found oil tanker, or whatever that is), but the Pacific Rim fandom is more concerned with box office results than most. The line between beloved cult film and the holy grail of a successful original action franchise is very thin with this one, and depends entirely on whether Legendary Pictures decides whether it made enough money to worth investing in a sequel, so it’s no wonder that fans of the movie, and of original science fiction in cinema, are watching very closely.

Those fans might be interested to know that according to /Film‘s research, Pacific Rim is, so far, the highest grossing original concept released to theater this year. Well, almost. The Croods, Dreamworks’ animated caveman adventure, exceeds Pac Rim‘s take, but both films have made it into the year-so-far’s ten highest grossing films, not an easy feat at the end of the summer blockbuster season. They are the only two films in those ten that aren’t an adaptation, a sequel, or a prequel.

From /Film:

Since opening two months ago, Pacific Rim has pulled in just $101 million at the U.S. box office. It’s fared much better abroad, however, grossing another $305 million to date for a worldwide total of $407 million… Interestingly, China was Pacific Rim‘s biggest fan, accounting for $111 million of that total alone. Iron Man 3 has been the only 2013 Hollywood film to do better, with $121 million, and that was actually a Chinese co-production.

Iron Man 3, it’s worth mentioning, is sitting a spot number five on the list of Highest Grossing Films of All Time, so it’s probably safe to say that if Pacific Rim can nearly match its box office pull in a certain market, it’s doing something right. Of course, Pac Rim cost a lot of money to make, and Warner Bros., its distributor, threw a lot of money into an ad campaign that some found less effective. While the movie has probably broken even, by most estimates it hasn’t recouped much after breaking even. So now might be a good time to mention that the DVD comes out next month?

(via /Film.)