New Line Cinema is getting ready to unleash their video game adaptation Rampage into the world, with the early box office projections for the new Dwayne Johnson action-thriller looking quite solid, although not astronomically impressive. The early projections for Rampage have put its opening weekend at $35 million, just weeks after New Line moved the project up a week from April 20 to April 13, to put some space between this movie and Avengers: Infinity War, after it unexpectedly moved to April 27 from May 4. While Rampage has two weeks before it has to contend with Avengers: Infinity War, it certainly needs to make the best of them.


The new tracking data released indicated there was a 44% "definite interest" in Rampage, while just 9% of the film's core male audience indicated Rampage was their "first choice." While these numbers may certainly not be impressive, it's worth noting that box office projections can often shift quite greatly, when the studio ramps up marketing efforts closer to the release date. Recent hits such as Deadpool ($50 million projection, $132.3 million opening weekend) and Black Panther ($100 million projection, $202 million opening weekend) show how greatly the buzz can increase in just a short amount of time, but also how unreliable these tracking figures can be.

Still, the $35 million figure matches up with the opening weekend of Dwayne Johnson's last film, Sony's Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, which opened last December in a crowded holiday frame that included Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and still managed to open with $36.1 million. In this era of front-loaded releases, Jumanji proved to have stellar legs, posting a sizable increase in its second weekend and minimal decreases throughout its run, with the movie just crossing the $400 million domestic plateau at the Box Office this week, following its 13th frame in theaters. It has fared well internationally as well with $541.3 million for a worldwide total of $941.9 million, from just a $90 million budget.

While no budget figures have been released for Rampage, the surprising success for Jumanji could have an impact on the Rampage results as well, and while it would certainly be impressive if Rampage put up numbers similar to Jumanji, that may be quite the tall order, considering Avengers: Infinity War is expected to dominated at the box office, likely throughout most of May. Still, Jumanji managed to cut an unconventional path to success even while going up against Star Wars: The Last Jedi, the highest-grossing movie of 2017, and given the massive fanbase Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson has amassed, anything is possible.

Rampage, which also stars Naomie Harris, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Joe Manganiello, Malin Akerman and Jake Lacy, will face three new movies in wide release, although none of them have the same blockbuster pedigree that Rampage does. Rampage will be going up against Universal's thriller Truth or Dare, starring Lucy Hale, Neon's indie sports drama Borg Vs. McEnroe starring Shia LaBeouf and Stellan Skarsgard and FUNimation's animated movie Sgt. Stubby: An American Hero, featuring a voice cast that includes Helena Bonham Carter, Logan Lerman and Gerard Depardieu. Variety broke the news about Rampage's box office projections today.