Project Hail Mary becomes Amazon MGM top box office hit

Amazon MGM Studios’ film “Project Hail Mary” has grossed about $164 million in North America and $136 million overseas after 10 days in theaters, according to figures cited by TechCrunch from The Hollywood Reporter. The result makes it Amazon MGM’s biggest box-office hit to date, overtaking “Creed III,” on a reported production budget of roughly $200 million.

The headline number matters less than what it signals about how a platform company can finance and distribute entertainment as an extension of its core business. Amazon does not need a studio to be profitable on ticket sales alone; it can treat theatrical release as one window in a broader funnel that includes Prime subscriptions, downstream streaming rights, and future merchandising and licensing. When a company already controls a global payments relationship and a high-frequency consumer app, marketing and distribution become less like negotiating with exhibitors and more like allocating inventory.

“Project Hail Mary” is also an example of risk that looks different when capital is cheap and optionality is high. A $200 million non-franchise science-fiction film would normally demand unusually strong confidence in audience demand. Amazon can justify the bet as a portfolio move: a theatrical hit builds negotiating leverage with talent, keeps theaters willing to book future titles, and creates a premium asset for the Prime catalogue.

TechCrunch notes Amazon’s strategy has evolved from smaller prestige releases to buying MGM and promising 14 theatrical releases per year. That shift pulls the film business toward the logic of other platform markets: more output, tighter control of windows, and more reliance on data-driven targeting. The winners are the firms that can cross-promote at scale; the losers are independent chains and producers who must accept platform-set terms to reach the same audience.

Amazon’s head of film Courtenay Valenti told The New York Times that the opening weekend validated a strategy of making “big, bold entertaining commercial films,” TechCrunch reports. The next releases are already queued: “The Sheep Detectives” in May and a “Masters of the Universe” reboot in June.

A decade ago, a studio’s biggest advantage was access to screens. In 2026, it is access to customers before they decide to buy a ticket.