After debuting on PVOD earlier this week, Sony’s Bullet Train has finally clawed its way past the $100 million mark at the domestic box office, in its ninth weekend. Essentially the last major release of the summer movie season, the action picture took advantage of a relatively quiet marketplace and performed consistently over the last couple of months.
Directed by David Leitch, the film debuted in theaters on August 5 and topped the box office with $30 million. Bullet Train is budgeted at a reported $90 million and has made over $130 million in overseas territories for a global haul of a little over $230 million. This is a good — but crucially, not great — total for the stylish action film, which marks Brad Pitt’s return to the genre after several years. By comparison, 2005’s Mr. & Mrs. Smith, which featured Pitt alongside Angelina Jolie, made over $480 million at the global box office.
Pitt appeared in an extended cameo earlier this year in the romantic-comedy adventure film The Lost City, which has pretty much performed at par with Bullet Train. That film, starring Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum in the lead roles, made just over $100 million domestically and around $190 million worldwide. Bullock and Tatum returned the favor by showing up for cameos in Bullet Train, which also features Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Joey King, Brian Tyree Henry, Michael Shannon, and Bad Bunny.
Based on the 2010 novel Maria Beetle by Japanese author Kōtarō Isaka, the film features Pitt as an assassin named Ladybug, who is pitted against the most “lethal adversaries from around the world” on the world’s fastest train in modern-day Japan. It’s arresting to look at, but not quite as fun on a narrative level. Collider own Ross Bonaime wrote that “beyond its overly labyrinthian plot, Bullet Train is repetitive and often dumb, but it relishes in the sort of caveman-brain enjoyment that one gets from an action film like this.”
This is also Leitch’s lowest-grossing film since the similarly dense (but just as stylish) Atomic Blonde, which tapped out with $100 million worldwide against a significantly smaller budget. The filmmaker’s last two releases — Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw and Deadpool 2 — made $760 million and $785 million worldwide, respectively. Incidentally, he used to work as Pitt’s stunt double back in the day
Bullet Train hit digital on September 27. The 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD editions hit the shelves on October 18. You can watch our interview with Leitch here, and read the film’s synopsis down below. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.
In Bullet Train, Brad Pitt stars as Ladybug, an unlucky assassin determined to do his job peacefully after one too many gigs gone off the rails. Fate, however, may have other plans, as Ladybug’s latest mission puts him on a collision course with lethal adversaries from around the globe—all with connected, yet conflicting, objectives—on the world’s fastest train. The end of the line is just the beginning in this non-stop thrill-ride through modern-day Japan from David Leitch, the director of Deadpool 2.
