King Kong is no lord of the box office

King Kong, Peter Jackson’s remake about the giant ape in love, took $9.8m (€8.1m) at US box offices in its first day, solid for a mid-week debut but far below the king-size premieres of other action epics.

Distributor Universal called Wednesday’s ticket sales a good beginning that would generate audience word-of-mouth on top of stellar reviews for King Kong.

“My little monkey’s doing great,” said Nikki Rocco, Universal’s head of distribution. “We’re convinced with all the information we have that this is the big guy, and he’s going to be around for a long time.”

Besides its domestic gross, King Kong debuted with a total of $8m (€6.6m) in 36 other countries yesterday. According to Universal, “King Kong” had the biggest Wednesday opening yet in Jackson’s home turf of New Zealand and outgrossed the first days of The Lord of the Rings movies in Hong Kong and Malaysia.

The first of Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings films, The Fellowship of the Ring, opened on a Wednesday in December 2001 with $18.2m (€15.3m), nearly double the take of King Kong.

The second instalment, The Two Towers, debuted on a Wednesday a year later with $26.2m (€22m), while the final chapter, The Return of the King, opened with $34.5m (€28.8m) the next year, a record for a Wednesday debut until Spider-Man 2 broke it six months later with $40.4m (€33.7m).