Shang-Chi flies past box office predictions for a record-breaking Labor Day weekend
Marvel Studios' Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings nearly doubled expectations for the long weekend

Disney boss Bob Chapek may have sounded a little crass and disrespectful (at best) when he referred to the company’s release strategy for Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings—Marvel Studios’ first Asian-led superhero movie—as an “interesting experiment,” but it seems to have paid off extremely well either way. In its opening weekend, not counting Labor Day tomorrow since it hasn’t happened yet, the movie has made $71.4 million, nearly doubling the low-end of expectations and falling just short of the record for best box office weekend of the never-ending pandemic (Black Widow opened at $80 million and then promptly fell off a cliff, while F9 opened at $70 and then bravely hung on for a while). Shang-Chi’s $71.4 million—again, not counting however much money it will make tomorrow, which Variety expects to be another $10 million or so also—obliterated the previous box office record for a Labor Day weekend release. The previous record of $30.6 million was set by Rob Zombie’s Halloween in 2007.