This weekend was a win for Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds (wife and husband respectively), who had the #1 and #2 spots at the box office with Deadpool and It Ends With Us.
Not a bad anniversary gift for the couple! (they celebrate 12 years this September)
Maybe they’ll celebrate while drinking Aviation gin, and video calling friends on Mint-Mobile. (Hint – Ryan Reynolds sold Aviation gin for $600 million and Mint-Mobile for $1.35 billion)
Here are two big lessons to take away from It Ends With Us’s success this weekend.
LESSON #1: YES, WOMEN WANT TO GO TO THE MOVIES, ESPECIALLY FOR POPULAR BOOK ADAPTATIONS THAT RESONATE WITH THEM.
Lots of books get made into movies and TV shows (over 85 in 2024 and 45 in 2023). But in the past few years, there have been very few female-led stories that make it to theaters, outside of the superhero, thriller, or animated films.
This is unfortunate, as women can become just as passionate and in love about certain books as superhero “nerds”.
It Ends With Us is one of those books. This is Colleen Hoover’s first book that has been made into a movie. Her novel has now sold 6.9 million copies, and has been on the NY Times bestseller list for 131 weeks.
And if you’re a fan – you gush about her books; there’s a Tiktok phenomena where fans like to film themselves weeping while reading her books.
84% of the audience for It Ends With Us were women. This is the largest gender skewed film since Taylor Swift last year, which also had an audience of 82% women.
This success shows if you adapt a popular book like this into a film, you’ll have female fans who will flock to go see it.
And the numbers show these fans are showing up.
The opening weekend for It Ends with Us was $50 million, and now it’s likely to end with $130-150 million domestically and $275+ million worldwide.
Not bad for just a $25 million budget.
This success is a little similar to the 2022 movie, Where the Crawdads Sing, an amazingly popular book that sold over 12 million copies and spent over 150 consecutive weeks on the NY Times bestseller list.
Despite competition from other 2022 summer blockbusters like Top Gun Maverick, Nope, Thor 4, Jurassic World 3, this $17-million-budgeted movie went on to gross $144 million globally. Women adored the book and wanted to see it on the screen.
These successes show that if a book is massively popular with women, and is adapted into an A-level movie adaptation that closely resembles the book, you will get women to show up and see it, and likely A-level box office too.
LESSON #2: BLAKE LIVELY IS A “BUTTS IN SEATS” STAR FOR REASONABLY BUDGETED FILMS.
Blake Lively makes reasonably budgeted programmers that can be profitable, without top-tier box office.
From her early days in her success in the TV show Gossip Girl, the question was whether she can draw an audience just based on her own charm?
Her first film that she led was in 2015, with The Age of Adaline, a modest success earning $43 million domestic and $65 million worldwide on a $20 million budget.
She then starred mostly by herself in the acclaimed and crowd-pleasing shark thriller The Shallows, which earned a total of $119 million worldwide on a $17 million budget.
She ended the decade with the buzzy and much-liked A Simple Favor, which earned $97 million globally on a $20 million budget.
As for “why,” well, Blake Lively is an impossibly gorgeous bombshell, who seems to have a genuinely enjoyable marriage to another online-friendly movie star (Ryan Reynolds), and she works infrequently enough to make her star vehicles into quasi-events.
She plays to her strengths, not trying to be a superhero or a fantasy-franchise protagonist, and uses her capital to make the sorts of movies Hollywood still thinks are “risky” in 2024.
Without arguing she’s the next Jodie Foster or Viola Davis, she’s an entirely compelling and engaging screen presence.
Amazon would be smart to release Blake Lively’s next film, A Simple Favor 2, to theaters before it hits Amazon Prime.
IN OTHER NEWS…. BORDERLANDS BOMBS HARD
The only other film to open this weekend was Lionsgate’s Borderlands, based on the popular video game, which had a disastrous opening weekend of just $8.8 million.
This film has a $120 million budget, and 10% on Rotten Tomatoes, making the film one of the biggest bombs of the year.
Borderlands seemed like a safe bet on paper.
It’s based on a relatively “new” popular video game (68 million units sold), with a solid genre director (Eli Roth) coming off the commercial and critical high marks of The House with a Clock in its Walls, and a cast featuring a slew of media-friendly “names” including Cate Blanchett, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jack Black (voicing a robot) and, in his first live-action theatrical role since late 2019, Kevin Hart.
However, after years of delays and reshoots, along with the misguided choice to make this a PG-13 adaptation of an R-rated video game, the film arrived in theaters with a distinct whiff of being damaged goods.
Audiences gave Borderlands a “D+” grade on CinemaScore, which is the worst grade that a blockbuster big-budget action film has earned in decades.
The only films that come to mind are Alexander from 2004 (a “D+” grade), Fantastic Four from 2015 (“C-“), and The Adventures of Pluto Nash from 2002 (“C-“).
I saw the film myself with some friends this weekend (we were the only ones in the theater!) and it was worse than we thought it’d be.
It’s historically bad, like a generic empty shell of an action movie, and is genuinely one of the worst films of the year. Cate Blanchett is enjoyable, but she can’t save this.
Given this opening, I’m predicting this to end with less than $40 million worldwide, which on a $120 million budget, is horrifically bad.
Oh well, at least Cate Blanchett had fun playing an action hero.
SHIFTING OVER TO THE HOLDOVER FILMS
Even with Blake Lively entering the box office, Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool & Wolverine remained at the #1 spot at the box office again this weekend, earning another $54 million (-45%) for $494 million so far.
That’s enough to put Deadpool & Wolverine past $1 billion worldwide, as the second-highest-grossing movie of the year behind Inside Out 2 ($1.59+ billion and counting).
Consider that the first Inside Out and the first Deadpool both earned around $360 million back in 2015/2016, and now their sequels are both going to earn $650+ million this summer.
This is what happens when you make sequels years later to movies that people actually love, that deliver on the promise of said sequels.
The only other movies coming out this year that have a chance at a billion are Moana 2 (which is a sequel to a beloved Disney classic, so it’s guaranteed to be huge), and maybe Mufasa: The Lion King or Joker 2.
Universal’s Twisters continues to stabilize after its big second-weekend-drop, falling only -34% from last weekend, while earning another $15 million in its fourth weekend.
With $223 million domestically, this guarantees the film to eventually earn $275+ million total in the U.S., which is a spectacular result for a disaster movie in 2024. However, Twisters did cost $155 million to make.
Twisters is struggling globally (it will end with only $375-400 million worldwide) because they made this movie so regionally specific to Oklahoma and middle-America, that no one outside of America is interested.
If we do ever get a third film, it would need to have a lower budget and a different shooting location.
Georgia could work for the next movie, after all it’s a cheaper location, and “Dixie Alley” gets hit a lot by tornados.
Or hell, maybe move the setting to Asia and focus on their typhoons and hurricanes!
The Twisters franchise could be commercially fixable with a lot of a changes made, but it might be best to call this film a win and move on.
Universal’s Despicable Me 4 earned another $8 million this weekend, dropping just -30% in its 6th weekend, and is doing even better overseas, with $804 million this far.
At this rate, a total of $900+ million worldwide could very well be in reach. Bring on Minions 3 in 2027!
Lastly there’s the second weekend of Warner Bros’ Trap, the latest thriller from M Night Shyamalan, which earned another $6.7 million, falling -57% in its second weekend.
Funny enough, this is a very similar hold to M Night Shyamalan’s other recent thriller, Old (which fell -59%).
That film eventually ended with $49 million domestically and $90 million worldwide, which would be a fine result for Trap.
Trap has a $20 million budget, most of which was co-financed by Shyamalan himself.
While not a big hit, Trap might still earn a decent profit when it hits streaming/video-on-demand.
As for next weekend, Alien Romulus is expected to open with $50+ million.
This would be an encouraging debut, considering this is Disney’s first attempt to revitalize the 45-year-old franchise. The film’s budget is expected to be north of $100+ million.
Reactions from influencers and critics has been very positive thus far, with many saying it’s the scariest Alien film since the first Alien in 1979 and Aliens in 1986. (But does that really mean much?)
People are saying this new film NAILS the third act/ending, which is encouraging since the Alien franchise is known for having very underwhelming endings (Alien 3, Prometheus, etc.)
I’m a fan of Fede Álvarez’s previous films (Evil Dead, Don’t Breathe), so here’s hoping this film is a success!
And that’s the weekend box office! Why do you think about It Ends With Us is doing so well?
Be sure to send a like and subscribe for more posts to be sent to your feed.
Zan Hollywood Box Office - Analysis Site 
Leave a comment