From New York to Nuremburg, Tallinn to Tianjin, Cuzco to Kuala Lumpur and throughout the towns and cities of 32 nations between them, Cinderella took center stage. Combined domestic and international revenues reached an outstanding $132.4 million for the Disney live action fable and included number one finishes in 27 of these territories. In the U.S. and Canada it made $70.1 million and attracted an audience that skewed surprisingly female, even for a movie about fairies and princesses. Women accounted for fully 77% of Fridays’ ticket sales, though by the weekend’s close the gender breakdown slid to a more predictable 66/34. As if the draw of seeing one of the world’s most beloved fairy tales brought to life with all the magic and artistry of modern film making wasn’t enough, Disney decided to sweeten the deal by throwing in a teaser for its upcoming Frozen 2, which was officially announced last Friday. The seven-minute short, Frozen Fever, featured a new song and is already creating a buzz of its own.
Out of the 31 remaining territories where Cinderella opened this weekend, China was easily the most fruitful. It launched to a sizable $25 million and is the biggest March release in the PRC’s history. The next most productive nation was Russia, where even in the face of a markedly weak ruble this film was able to generate $7.3 million. It made $5 million in Mexico, and the top territory in Western Europe was Italy, where it opened in first to $4.6 million. So far Disney’s latest live action rendition of Cinderella from director Kenneth Branagh has easily enjoyed the best opening to date out of the scores of films based on this fairytale, though it still has a ways to go in order to surpass the $856.4 million inflation-adjusted benchmark set by the same studio’s 1950 animated classic. Launching to considerably less fanfare was Run All Night, a fast paced action-heavy thriller starring Liam Neeson. With tough competition at the domestic box office it opened to just $11 million and clearly missed the young, male, non-Cinderella watching crowd that Warner Bros. had hoped to draw in. The biggest surprise here wasn’t that this film, Neeson’s third in just seven months, fell short of his typical opening figures but that the limited audience that it did command was primarily composed of older women. 52% of polled ticket buyers were female, while an even more unexpected 86% were over the age of 25. Considering its $50 million price these are not at all auspicious developments.
Following behind on the domestic chart was Kingsman: The Secret Service. In its fifth weekend on U.S. marquees this British-American production from director Matthew Vaughn’s Varn Films and 20th Century Fox made $6.2 million. It finished second overseas on $13.7 million. Notable returns came form South Korea, where it earned $3.5 million, and Germany where it made $2.38 million and nabbed first place. With these additions its global cumulative stands at a hearty $277.3 million and it looks likely to pass Taken 3 as the top action release in a year that hasn’t been particularly kind to this genre.
Also adding a positive note to the weekend was indie horror flic It Follows. RADiUS scored the year’s best selling specialty release with this cerebral thriller that launched to $163,453 in LA and New York for solid $40,863 per theatre average.
In slightly larger scale news, Big Hero 6’s international cumulative ballooned to $632.7 million after a $17.6 million at the global box office, pushing it beyond How to Train Your Dragon 2’s totals to become the top animated film released in 2014.
Next weekend we’ll be reporting on Divergent sequel Insurgent, and Sean Penn’s Gunman, as well as Christian drama Do You Believe?
Lorenzo Soria