Shang-Chi's great box office performance is its low second-weekend drop. The 2021 box office has bounced back in a big way from the abysmal 2020 box office during the height of the coronavirus pandemic, but it's still not back to pre-pandemic levels, and may never get there. Even so, Shang-Chi shows there's still hope and the box office is still sustainable for the right movies.
A lot of big post-pandemic releases have seen really poor opening weekend numbers, but even the movies that opened reasonably strong, like Space Jam: A New Legacy, and others, which would have happened with ease in the pre-pandemic box office.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings didn't only post a record high Labor Day weekend box office haul of $75 million ($94 million when the full four-day holiday weekend is counted), but now in its second weekend it's only down 52.5% from its 3-day opening weekend numbers, which is a massive improvement in general, but especially compared to other movies opening over $70 million, like F9 and Black Widow.
The big lesson from Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings is that there's still space on the big screen for big-budget blockbusters, and it's not just lower-to-mid budget family movies and horror movies that can see box office success. Granted, in many ways, Shang-Chi is the exception that proves the rule. While big blockbusters may be profitable, that doesn't mean there can be multiple releases a month making that kind of money just yet or that $1 billion is an acceptable benchmark anymore. Things are hardly "back to normal" and the industry will need to make a lot of decisions around how budgets and release schedules, but it does show the big screen experience still has some life in it yet.
Where Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings box office end up remains to be seen, but box office performance from week three onward has been pretty strong across the board despite the big second weekend drops, so it could even be competitive with Black Widow if its performance holds. Now all eyes are on the rest of the Dune, to see just how much kick is left in the theatrical experience box office.
