It’s going to be a really special weekend at the box office, the kind that studios pray for, pine for, and wish for. For out of the blue, a feature adaptation of a femme driven novel, Colleen Hoover’s It Ends With Us, has a shot at possibly undermining Disney/Marvel Studios’ Deadpool and Wolverine in its third weekend; another classic girls against boys on the marquee ala Oppenheimer and Barbie (in demo draws that is). Tonight, industry sources tell us that the Blake Lively starring feature has racked up $7M in previews that began at 2PM today.
That figure isn’t that far from the pre-Covid previews cash of Fifty Shades of Grey which posted $8.75M in previews and went on to a $30.2M Friday and $85.1M opening weekend. The Justin Baldoni starring and directed Wayfarer co-financed feature is also near the $7.5M previews of 2008’s Twilight which posted a $35.9M opening day and $69.6M opening weekend. It’s a preview figure for femme-driven movie like we haven’t seen in quite some time (not counting superhero movies like Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman). While we’re talking superhero movies, heck, It Ends With Us is already beating that of Marvel’s The Marvels ($6.6M previews).
It Ends With Us is movie that came on tracking at $15M, then swelled from there with industry projections at $40M and even significantly higher than that. Many are holding their breath. Why? Is It Ends With Us going to translate to regular moviegoers? That’s the question. This happens with tracking sometimes; it doesn’t capture the non-frequent moviegoers, in this case, female booker readers. Not all book readers are moviegoers, and they’re clearly showing up and that’s why it’s hard for some to peg the opening of this movie at this point in time. Given the nature of female driven movies, the demo can show up in bulk tonight and Friday, with a fall-off on Saturday, read the Friday-to-Saturday drop on Twilight was -40% while Where the Crawdads Sing (Sony’s other femme lit-to-the screen title from summer 2022) was -26%. By the way, It Ends With Us buries that pic’s previews which were $2.3M. Sources tell us that It Ends With Us already has some $18M in presales, but that’s for the whole weekend.
There’s several perfect storms working in this movie’s favor, from Hoover’s popularity, to Lively being in the midst of the Deadpool & Wolverine press tour (and hubby Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman in It Ends With Us) to, yes, that Taylor Swift song in the trailer “My Tears Richochet”. Audiences are already loving this at 94%.
Tonight, a rival exec told me this is the first time since 1990 that husband and wife superstars had back-to-back theatrical releases that boosted each other’s; the last being Bruce Willis with Die Hard 2 and Demi Moore with Ghost.
Even if It Ends With Us settles for No. 2 with a $30M opening, Hollywood needs to take the lesson of this weekend like it’s coming from a burning bush: Think twice about what you send to streaming, think twice about jettisoning a genre to steaming, because there’s gold in them thar cinemas.