LOS ANGELES — Going into the weekend, “The Meg” looked like a big, fat belly flop for Warner Bros.

Surveys indicated minimal interest in the killer shark movie, which cost at least $200 million to make and market. Rival studios snickered that Warner’s new marketing chief had made a rookie mistake in backing “The Meg” with a campy ad campaign: Make a joke of your own noncomedic movie, the Hollywood conventional wisdom holds, and ticket buyers will stay home.

Guess who is getting the last laugh? “The Meg,” a brassy, brainless, computer-generated mishmash, took in $44.5 million at North American theaters — roughly 120 percent more than most analysts had expected. “The Meg” collected an additional $97 million overseas, with China contributing half of that total.

“The Meg” was co-financed and co-produced by Gravity Pictures, a Chinese company, and designed to sell tickets in China. The movie co-stars a Chinese actress, Li Bingbing, and the 70-foot shark at its center threatens a crowded Chinese beach in one action sequence. “The Meg” stars Jason Statham and was directed by Jon Turteltaub, whose last big-budget movie was the 2010 flop “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.”