'Uncharted' beat expectations at the box office, but needs staying power to become a rare video-game movie hit

• Sony's "Uncharted" topped the domestic box office over the long weekend with $51 million.
• With a $120 million budget, its strength in the coming weeks will determine its success.

Sony's patience with its long-awaited "Uncharted" movie, based on the hit PlayStation video-game franchise, seems to be paying off.

After several delays, the movie finally hit North American theaters over the weekend and beat industry projections. It opened with $44 million domestically over the three-day weekend, and $51 million over the four-day Presidents' Day weekend.

Box Office Pro's chief analyst Shawn Robbins previously projected on Wednesday that "Uncharted" would open with $30.7 million over the three-day weekend and $35.4 million over the long holiday.

With a $120 million production budget before marketing expenses, the movie's box-office hold in the coming weeks will be the true measure of its success. But it's off to a strong start and has so far earned $140 million worldwide.

'Uncharted' faces little competition this coming weekend. Then "The Batman" arrives on March 4.

Sony, which also released "Spider-Man: No Way Home," has topped the domestic box office for seven of the last 10 weekends since "No Way Home" opened on December 17. The actor Tom Holland starred in both.

Without its own streaming service, the studio has committed its biggest movies, which also included last year's "Venom: Let There Be Carnage," to the big screen during the pandemic and offloaded other movies to streamers. Those include "Greyhound" on Apple TV+ and "Cinderella" on Prime Video.

Sony also recently struck a five-year licensing deal with Netflix, in which the streaming giant gets the domestic rights to Sony's movies after their theatrical and home-entertainment windows, beginning with this year's slate. That means "Uncharted" will eventually land on Netflix (Disney also scored the streaming and TV rights to Sony movies after their Netflix runs).

The path to movie theaters for "Uncharted" was long. Numerous filmmakers were attached to the movie at various points in its development, including "Silver Linings Playbook" director David O. Russell, "10 Cloverfield Lane" director Dan Trachtenberg, and "Bumblebee" director Travis Knight. Ruben Fleischer, who helmed 2018's "Venom" for Sony, ultimately directed the movie.

Video-game movies have a history of commercial and critical failure. As media companies mine IP to boost their streaming services, they've embraced TV as a way to adapt video games. Some of the shows in the works include Netflix's "Assassin's Creed," HBO's "The Last of Us," Paramount+'s "Halo," and Amazon's "Fallout."

But that doesn't mean Hollywood is giving up on video-game movies. Paramount will release "Sonic the Hedgehog 2" this year, for starters.

"Uncharted" continued the trend of negative reviews, and has a 40% Rotten Tomatoes critic score. But audiences enjoyed it; aside from its decent box-office start, it has a 90% audience score at Rotten Tomatoes and received a B+ grade from CinemaScore, which surveys audiences on a movie's opening night in theaters.

"If less is more, 'Uncharted' must be a masterpiece," wrote the Wall Street Journal's Joe Morgenstern. "It's bloodless, heartless, joyless, sexless and, with one exception, charmless."