Weekend Box Office: Who needs the Ten Rings when Shang-Chi almost has $200 million?

We’re not even done with September, but it has been one hell of a month for Marvel Studios’ Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings. The Simu Liu-led superhero movie opened above $70 million, much stronger than industry forecasts predicted, and it managed to completely destroy the previous record set for a movie released during Labor Day weekend (Rob Zombie’s Halloween, which made $30 million more than a decade ago). The question, though, was whether or not it could hold on to that box office power better than Black Widow did, which had opened simultaneously in theaters and on Disney+’s premium tier (with the latter quickly becoming the preferred place to see it, if the box office receipts were anything to go by). Shang-Chi, notably, is not on Disney+—a move that Disney’s Bob Chapek crassly referred to as an “interesting experiment”—and now, after three weeks, it’ll most likely outperform Black Widow by the end of the month.

Shang-Chi made $21 million this past weekend, and while that’s a drop off from where it was last week ($34 million), that still carried it to a total of $176 million at the U.S. box office. Black Widow, by comparison, is the current box office champion for the year at a total of $183 million, which Shang-Chi should have no trouble beating. The year’s other big winner, F9, made $172 million and has already been beaten by Shang-Chi.

But there are other movies on the box office charts, even if none of them even beat $6 million this past weekend. Free Guy came the closes, getting $5 million and reaching $108 million total (nothing to turn your nose up at, to be fair). After that is Clint Eastwood’s Cry Macho, which made $4.5 million in its simultaneous theatrical/HBO Max debut. Warner Bros.’ day-and-date streaming plan started off strong, with movies like Godzilla Vs. Kong and Mortal Kombat playing well in theaters despite being available to stream at home, but few movies other than the really big names have managed to make much of an impact in theaters. That presumably means that people are watching these movies at home on HBO Max, which is certainly good for HBO Max, but it can’t possibly be good for Warner Bros.’ continued viability as a major movie studio. That means the studio is probably telling the truth when it says that this “all of our movies will be on HBO Max, day one” stunt won’t happen again.

Elsewhere on the charts, Gerard Butler’s knowingly retro action thriller Copshop made a relatively respectable $2.3 million in its debut, with the limited releases for The Eyes Of Tammy Faye and The Nowhere Inn making $675,000 and $20,000 (respectively). For a more detailed breakdown of this weekend’s box office numbers, head over to Box Office Mojo.