Last weekend, two new films were released on a large scale in the North American film market, namely "Karate Kid: Legends" produced by Sony and starring Jackie Chan, and the Australian horror film "Bring Her Back" produced by the independent label A24.
"The Karate Kid: Fusion" stars Jackie Chan and Wang Ban.
The Karate Kid is a long-lived Hollywood IP. It started with the movie The Karate Kid, written by New York screenwriter Robert Mark Kamen based on his own experience in learning martial arts. It was a huge hit after its release in 1984, and significantly increased the influence of karate in the United States. Over the next decade, the series had three consecutive sequels and was also adapted into a game.
The 2010 version of "The Karate Kid" starred Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith.
In 2010, the famous African-American actor Will Smith bought the copyright and set the story in Beijing. It was remade into "The Karate Kid" starring Jackie Chan and Will Smith's son Jaden Smith. Karate was also replaced by Chinese Kung Fu. The American TV series "Cobra Kai" that was born in 2018 was actually derived from this IP, but the story was moved back to the original setting. The whole series has a total of six seasons and was broadcast on Netflix in February this year.
Just three months later, the new version of "The Karate Kid" was released, combining the Chinese Kung Fu setting of the old version of "The Karate Kid" with the karate world of the American TV series "Cobra Dojo". Jackie Chan is still the lead actor, and the young actor is replaced by Wang Ban, who once starred in the Disney+ series "Journey to the West ABC". Although it is innovative, the plot design has not kept up with the times. At present, the film has only a 57% freshness rating on the film review website "Rotten Tomatoes", which has not yet reached the passing line, and the enthusiasm of North American audiences for this IP is obviously lower than Sony's expectations.
"The Karate Kid: Fusion" opened with just $21 million.
In the end, "The Karate Kid: Fusion" was released in 3,809 theaters and earned only $21 million in the opening box office, ranking third in the weekend box office chart. This result was lower than Sony's internal estimate of $25 million and the industry's estimate of $30 million, and was less than half of the opening box office of "The Karate Kid" in 2010, which was 55.7 million yuan. The production cost of this new version was as high as $45 million.
After North America, "The Karate Kid: Fusion" has been confirmed to be released in domestic theaters on June 7.
"Girlfriend" has an 88% freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Another new film released last weekend, "Revive Her," was directed by brothers Danny and Michael Phillips. Their previous film, "Answer Me," was also distributed in North America by A24, earning nearly $50 million at the North American box office, with a production cost of only $4.5 million. Three years later, "Revive Her" has nothing to do with "Answer Me" in terms of plot, but the story type and image style of the whole work are similar. After "Answer Me" received a 94% "Rotten Tomatoes" freshness, it also received unanimous praise from the media. It currently has an 88% freshness on "Rotten Tomatoes," and is a masterpiece in the horror film genre.
The opening box office of "Resurrection" was not as good as the Phillips brothers' previous film "Answer Me".
However, after being released in 2,409 theaters in North America, "She's the One" only earned $7.08 million in its opening box office. Compared to the $10.43 million opening box office of "Reply Me" two years ago, it was a significant decline and could only rank fifth on the weekend box office list.
In summary, the performance of the two new films last weekend was not ideal, but the total North American box office this weekend still reached about 150 million US dollars, far exceeding the 67 million US dollars of the same period last year, so that the momentum of the 2025 summer season remains unabated, mainly due to the first-ranked "Lilo and Stitch" (Disney) and the second-ranked "Mission: Impossible 8: Final Reckoning" (Paramount) The performance was very good in the second weekend of release. Compared with the opening weekend, the box office of both films last weekend only dropped by about 57%, and the prospects are promising. Especially for "Mission: Impossible 8", which is under great pressure due to its high production costs, it is not completely hopeless to achieve profitability according to this momentum.
