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New York — In a box-office battle that pitted young versus old, female against male, modest drama versus big-budget spectacle, the teenage romance The Fault in Our Stars easily bested the time-shifting Tom Cruise action film Edge of Tomorrow.
(Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort in The Fault in our Stars)
The results offered a stark illustration of shifting box-office trends. Whereas big-budget, male-oriented action films with stars like Cruise have long ruled the day at North American multiplexes, those movies are increasingly under siege from films ignited by passionate young female moviegoers.
"The notion of what is traditional summer fare is changing," said Paul Dergarabedian, senior analyst for box-office tracker Rentrak. "Women and young girls are as vitally important to the box office in the summer as the young males, who Hollywood has courted and coveted for decades."
The Fault in Our Stars, a highly-anticipated adaptation of John Green's best-selling book, was in some ways another example of the power of young-adult fiction. But unlike Twilight or The Hunger Games, The Fault in Our Stars isn't about science-fiction or fantasy, but is rather a more naturalistic drama about young love and cancer.
Twentieth Century Fox said that an overwhelming 82% of the audience for the film was female, an unusually large gender gap for such a popular movie. The majority of the audience eagerly turned out for Thursday night and Friday showings.
"We knew that we had an engaged fan base but we weren't sure of the depth of it," said Chris Aronson, Fox's distribution head. "We also knew we had formidable competition in the marketplace for similar if not identical demographics."
Rounding out the top 3
That competition Disney's fairy tale Maleficent, starring Angelina Jolie slid to second place in its second week with $33.5m. With a two-week global sum of $335.5m, Maleficent has performed well, but it remains to be seen if it can be a real money-maker for Disney, which spent an estimated $180m to make it, plus huge amounts to market it.
Warner Bros.' science-fiction thriller Edge of Tomorrow, directed by Doug Liman and co-starring Emily Blunt, appealed more to males (61% of its audience) and moviegoers older than 25 (73% of its audience). The film about a U.S. major (Cruise) stuck in a "Groundhog Day"-like time loop during a battle against invading aliens won Cruise some of his best reviews in years, but like the star's recent Oblivion and Jack Reacher it didn't turn out moviegoers as expected.
(Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt in Edge of Tomorrow. Warner Bros.)
"They're just two very different movies and the fact they're both on the same weekend, it's not one versus the other," said Jeff Goldstein, head of domestic distribution for Warner Bros., said referring to The Fault in Our Stars. ''But there is something really special about a movie like Fault, where an audience really rallied around it."
"For us, this is really about the long play," added Goldstein.
Edge of Tomorrow also showed that such films still have a lot of box-office muscle, it's only best flexed overseas. The film made $82m internationally, making most of that in China, Korea and Russia.
Sony's comedy sequel 22 Jump Street, starring Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill, kicked off abroad a week ahead of its North American release, earning $8.8m. Next weekend, it will open alongside DreamWorks' How to Train Your Dragon 2.
