Budget: $190m Domestic Box Office: $101.8m International Box Office: $309.2m While it may seem a little harsh to label Pacific Rim as a flop in the United States, Guillermo Del Toro's high-concept blockbuster could only muster the 23rd highest opening weekend of 2013, and took a whole eight weeks to cross the $100m threshold, generally regarded as the bare minimum for a summer tent-pole release. Make no mistake about it; the recently-greenlit sequel is based almost entirely on the movie's strong overseas box office rather than the disappointing domestic numbers. Despite the Transformers franchise proving that cinemagoers love watching giant robots destroy cities, Pacific Rim could only open in third place with a $37.3m debut weekend, in what largely proved to be a tough year for original sci-fi at the domestic box office. International audiences were much more receptive to the epic showdowns between Jaegers and Kaiju, providing over 75% of the worldwide gross with (you guessed it) China proving to be the movie's biggest market. Pacific Rim became one of the highest-grossing Hollywood releases ever in the country, eclipsing the domestic numbers with a $45.3m opening on the way to a total gross of $111.9m, enough to place it as the second-biggest American hit of the year there behind Iron Man 3. With the increasing emergence of China as a major revenue stream for Hollywood blockbusters, it wouldn't be a surprise to see the sequel designed with the country's ever-widening cinema audience in mind.
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