This weekend was supposed to be another coronation moment for Channing Tatum, but he ran into a couple of snags namely two crazy female cops. He also ran into the fact that he was in a $150 million movie (White House Down) that was exactly the same as another recent movie (Olympus Has Fallen), but this is Hollywood, so movies about the same thing are to be expected.
The weekend verdict is in and the funny ladies came out in really, really strong second place with $40 million. Mind you the movie cost $40 million to make.
$40 million is big. It’s Melissa McCarthy and Sandra Bullock’s biggest opening. It sold 50% more advance tickets than Bridesmaids according to Fandango. But, sadly, history has proven that there’s no way to know if this great opening will do anything for women’s movies or even women’s comedy movies. We all thought Bridesmaids would do that and it really didn’t have the wide ranging effect outside of making stars out of Melissa McCarthy, Kristen Wiig (Wiig has 4 movies coming out this year), and director Paul Feig. In any event, no matter what happens, this is great news and a huge relief.
The film also showed an evolution in the audience because there clearly weren’t only women enjoying themselves this weekend. Women made up the lion’s share of the audience at 65%, but the rest were men and those numbers for the men were a bit higher than the opening weekend for Bridesmaids.
Expect this film to have a long tail throughout the summer since there is limited — more like no other — choices of films about women. And the word of mouth will be really good, and this will also play into the fact that women don’t always rush out on opening weekend.
