Angelina Jolie bewitched audiences around the world in this weekend’s number one hit Maleficent. The live action Sleeping Beauty re-imagining, from Avatar’s Academy Award winning art-director Robert Stromberg in his directorial debut, took home $171.6 million from 47 markets in its opening run. The Disney production led key overseas territories Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK, Russia, Brazil, and its biggest international market, Mexico, where it was the most successful opening of 2014 with $13.4 million in box office receipts recorded since Thursday. Maleficent played very well with its target demographic of young girls and their mothers, the same one that propelled Frozen to its stratospheric success. Women made up 60% audiences, and 30% percent of viewers were under the age of 18. In the US, families comprised 45% of viewers. A shrewd matching by Disney executives of proven concept and star-power made this weekend’s stellar release the largest ever for the Golden Globe winner Jolie, who shined as the eponymous evil witch in her first live action appearance since 2010’s The Tourist. Her previous record openings were Mr. and Ms. Smith and Wanted, both of which earned $50 million in their debuts. While it has already made up its reported $170 million budget, any hope of this weekend’s international chart-topper becoming a mega-hit rests on a big turnout in the next 11 days before audiences will be glued to its television sets for a month as the World Cup kicks off in Brazil. Initial figures place Maleficent’s $70 million domestic figure between two recent films that also used the star + fairytale strategy: 2010’s Johnny Depp-led Alice in Wonderland enjoyed a $116 million North American release, and 2012’s Snow White and The Huntsman, which featured a slightly less attractive (in terms of ticket sales anyways) Charlize Theron helped Universal’s action-heavy adaptation of the Brothers Grimm fable to a $56.2 million domestic opening.
Even the star-studded cadre of superheroes in X-Men: Days of Future Past couldn’t withstand Maleficent’s black magic as last frame’s breakout hit fell 68% to finish number two at home with $32.6 million in its second week. Still, after last weekend’s $110.5 million opening there’s little reason to shed any tears for Fox’s standout hit of the year. Its domestic cumulative now sits at $161 million and looks set to better X-Men Origins: Wolverine’s $179.9 million run in a matter of days. Overseas the picture fell just 50% and finished second with a $95.6 million haul. With a global cumulative of $500.1 million it is now the biggest in the franchise (not adjusting for inflation) and looks set to grow even more with 36 openings, including the Russian and Chinese markets, slated for next weekend.
Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane must have taken a bite of the witch’s poisoned apple as his A Million Ways to Die in the West suffered a disappointing $17.1 million domestic debut. Compared to his last film Ted, which earned $54 million in its opening run and is still the biggest original R-rated comedy release of all time, this is quite a let down. The combined powers of Charlize Theron, Liam Neeson, Amanda Seyfried, Giovanni Ribisi, Sarah Silverman and Neil Patrick Harris just couldn’t equal Disney’s deadly combination of a beloved fable and newly recrowned box-office empress Angelina Jolie.
Former king-of-the-screen Tom Cruise stars in Edge of Tomorrow, which opened to $20 million in what was essentially 28 test markets. It finished first in Indonesia with $2 million and Taiwan with $1.9 million, where Mr. Cruise scored a personal record release. Its full debut is scheduled for next weekend with launches in China, Russia, Mexico, Australia, France, and North America.
Godzilla, who like Tom recently fell from the top of the pack, managed $15 million overseas in its third frame, and did $12.2 million at home. China and Japan have not yet heard the monster’s roar so we can expect a boost in global sales when those markets open on June 13 and July 25 respectively.
It must be getting boring but Frozen, which for the record was released on November 27, 2013, just won’t stop generating news. It made number one again in Japan, now for the 12th week in a row and became the 3rd most successful picture in that market’s history with a return of $205.9 million.
Next weekend Edge of Tomorrow makes its major-market opening and Fox 2000 is set to release its hotly anticipated young adult comedy The Fault in Our Stars.
Lorenzo Soria