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Heading to the weekend - The YA portion of Maleficent's core demo will be heavily focused on The Fault in Our Stars which has already earned a Godzilla-sized $8M from Thursday eve. screenings. Weekend estimates for Fault range from mid $30M to mid $50M with the higher number looking more likely. Edge of Tomorrow is expected to bring in $30M. Maleficent should fall somewhere in between -- depending on how much of its core it is able to retain in the face of stiff direct competition. Women, families and males not attracted to Edge of Tomorrow may go for Maleficent. The film is also benefiting from repeat views.
In its first week in release, Maleficent's is running almost $2M ahead of earlier projections.
boxoffice
NORTH AMERICA: 'Maleficent' Casts Box Office Spell with $93.9M in its First Week
on June 06, 2014
Earlier this week:
Solid $6.2M MON for #Maleficent heading to about $92M in 1st full week. Shd smash $100M on FRI, nearing $125M by SUN.
— Gitesh Pandya (@giteshpandya) June 3, 2014
boxoffice.com
Twitter Tracking
Fri Jun 06 as of 03:08PM PDT
| Title | # Tweets |
|---|---|
| The Fault in Our Stars | 286,100 |
| Maleficent | 56,867 |
| 22 Jump Street | 40,706 |
| Edge of Tomorrow | 19,578 |
| X-Men: Days of Future Past | 7,500 |
Fri Jun 06 as of 12:08PM PDT
| Title | # Tweets |
|---|---|
| The Fault in Our Stars | 198,916 |
| Maleficent | 51,167 |
| 22 Jump Street | 28,769 |
| Edge of Tomorrow | 16,380 |
| X-Men: Days of Future Past | 5,835 |
Fri Jun 06 as of 10:08AM PDT
| Title | # Tweets |
|---|---|
| The Fault in Our Stars | 148,914 |
| Maleficent | 45,088 |
| 22 Jump Street | 21,801 |
| Edge of Tomorrow | 12,718 |
| X-Men: Days of Future Past | 4,776 |
Entertainment buzz: Facebook's top 10 moments of the week http://t.co/GelNlxtNzM
— CBS Entertainment (@CBSShowbiz) June 6, 2014
deadline
forbes
Women's Films Ride to Box Office Success
Melissa Silverstein ContributorLast weekend, Maleficent opened magnificently to a box office total of $70 million here in the US, and over $100 million abroad. As of today, it has grossed $88 million in the US and almost $142 million overseas making its total before the weekend at a little over $230 million. This weekend the film contends against fading star in Tom Cruise in the well reviewed Edge of Tomorrow (it is at 90% on rotten tomatoes) and the female driven tear jerker The Fault in Our Stars based on the best selling YA novel.
The Fault in Our Stars opens in the US in 3,100 theatres and with Maleficent holding onto 3,900 that means films about women dominate 7,000 screens this weekend. It has become common for summer films to unroll on Thursday nights, and last night, the Fault in Our Stars did a stellar $8.2 million in overnight screenings. The Thursday night box office take for this romance was equal to the box office take of a recent superhero film X-Men: Days of Future Past. That’s big news. And let’s face it, Shailene Woodley is a star. She came to the world’s attention with her stellar performance in The Descendants, and then has steadily built her resume quite smartly taking on the blockbuster Divergent series (another YA sensation.) According to Fandango, 65% of people buying tickets to the film are buying them because of her, and the film is poised to be the biggest romantic drama in the company’s 14 years history.
Shailene Woodley is now poised to be an even bigger star with the impending success of The Fault in Our Stars. What’s fascinating to watch related to Fault is that this is a very low budget — $12 million — stand alone film that will do very good numbers without effects and without it becoming a franchise. Stand alone movies are rare these days, especially in the summer. The studio is predicting that it will make in the mid $20 million over the weekend, strong overnight and building word of mouth, it is looking like it will make at least $30-$35 million. Studios tend to hedge their bets especially related to movies about women because they really don’t have good data to build on — since they don’t release enough movies for women. Last weekend, Maleficent was predicted in the $60 million range and it ended up at $70 million, and Angelina Jolie mentioned a potential sequel this week while she was doing press in Asia.
While Fault it is based on a very popular book and has an incredible social media presence, still, a romantic tear jerker causing this much of a wave is something to talk about. And the fact that a good Tom Cruise film, and let’s face it, he hasn’t had too many lately, is going to come in second or maybe third at the box office — who knows how well Maleficent will hold — means something is clearly happening in Hollywood. It could be a generational shift, Tom Cruise is now fifty, or maybe, hopefully, the studios are figuring out that women are not box office poison, but they are box office gold. The problem continues to be that they just don’t put enough women onscreen and when they do, they always act surprised when the films are bigger successes than predicted.
But while these successes are great, they are still just a couple of films in a sea of men that have been and are still to come on our screens this summer. The upcoming Tammy starring Melissa McCarthy and well as If I Stay starring Chloe Grace Moretz are the only two films on the calendar that look to be released in a significant amount of theatres this summer (namely over 1,000.) And then there is the problem of women directors. With the delay of the Wachowski’s Jupiter Ascending from next month to next February, not a single film being released by the big six studios this summer will have been directed by a woman.
But remember there are some wonderful smaller films about and directed by women out this summer, and at the top of that list is Gillian Robespierre’s Obvious Child starring the about to burst to full fledged stardom Jenny Slate. It begins its run this weekend. While it might take an effort to find this film and other ones like Lucky Them directed by Megan Griffiths and the ever expanding Belle (it is in 476 theatres) directed by Amma Asante, I promise, it is worth it.
