Alien Romulus box office explained: Can it beat Prometheus?

Early box office projections are looking good for Alien: Romulus, but does it have the steam to beat the franchise record-holder, Prometheus? 

The Alien franchise has always had pretty strong box office performance, and its low-to-mid-budget roots mean it’s a high performer for studios. That the original Alien looks so good on an $11 million budget is impressive, but to then make almost $190 million in its lifetime makes it a powerhouse. 

Even as the series has dipped into less well-received outings, the franchise typically performs well. It returned to prominence with Prometheus, which brought back both the franchise’s prestige and its dominant box office numbers.

Ahead of the Alien: Romulus release date, here’s a look at where those numbers are today and what it needs to become the highest-grossing Alien film of all time. 

How much does Alien: Romulus need to make?

In order to be a box office success, Alien: Romulus will need to make around $200 million at the box office. 

It’s rare to get exact numbers on a budget. There’s a lot of fuzzy math that goes into budgeting for a Hollywood movie, but the rule of thumb is that a film needs to make double its budget to account for marketing. 

For a film that’s heavily marketed and in a more established franchise, it’s safe to factor in a little over, which is how we arrive at $200 million. It’s not an unobtainable figure, either. The last two films, Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, both grossed over $240 million on much higher budgets. 

Alien: Romulus box office projections

Based on box office projections, Alien: Romulus will have an opening weekend in the neighborhood of $28-38 million. Variety reported the numbers but also noted these are lowball estimates.

Positive word of mouth (it already has the third-best Rotten Tomatoes score in the franchise) and fans eager for a return to the gritty, claustrophobic terror of the original Alien means the film could do better, with some experts believing it could earn closer to $40-50 million its opening weekend. If it does, it could surpass Prometheus as the franchise’s highest opening weekend box office. 

Romulus is going up against a high-grossing 2024 box office. After a long downturn period, films like Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine seem to have re-ignited fans, easily crossing the coveted $1 billion mark.

While it seems unlikely Alien: Romulus will be the first in the Alien timeline to cross $1 billion, it does have a good chance of being a top performer in the franchise.

How does it compare to other Alien movies?

Romulus has an uphill battle to climb to beat the two highest-grossing Alien films, but it’s reasonable to assume it will make a comparable box office to the franchise’s most popular offerings. 

	Budget	Opening Weekend	Worldwide Gross
Prometheus	$120-130,000,000	$51,050,101	$402,448,265
Alien: Covenant	$97-111,000,000	$36,160,621	$238,521,247
Alien	$11,000,000	$3,527,881	$186,955,482
Aliens	$18,500,000	$10,052,042	$183,291,893
Alien vs. Predator	$60-70,000,000	$38,291,056	$172,543,519
Alien Resurrection	$70,000,000	$16,474,092	$160,707,848
Alien 3	$50-60,000,000	$19,449,867	$158,500,000
Alien vs Predator: Requiem	$40,000,000	$10,059,425	$128,884,494
Alien: Romulus	$80,000,000	–	–

Alien has always been a mid-to-low-budget franchise. The original film proved the value of the concept with a killer box office on a shoestring budget, which only led to bigger and bigger budgets. 

Beyond that first movie, the box office return has always been pretty even. The gross has generally gone up, but the budget has typically increased in tandem. Romulus will mark a return to a mid-budget film, though, meaning it has the potential to make a higher return than past entries. 

Before it hits theaters on August 16, read our Alien: Romulus review now. Until then, you can also see where Alien ranks among our best horror movies, learn everything you need to know about the Xenomorphs, or see our ranking of the Alien movies.