Disney’s Maleficent was tracking toward $64 million before the weekend began and by the end of Friday was well on its way with an “A” CinemaScore and $24.2 million opening day. The film kept moving through the weekend and ended with an estimated $70 million domestically, but it has a massive, $180 million budget to contend with and this one is going to come down to overseas totals in its effort to break even as somewhere around $450-500 million worldwide should put on track to finishing in the black. So far it’s worldwide total is $170.6 million, let’s see what that might mean…
Obvious comparisons begin with 2010’s Alice in Wonderland, which finished with $334.1 domestically and $1.02 billion worldwide. Next is 2013’s Oz the Great and Powerful, coming in with $243.9 million domestically and $493.3 million worldwide. Both of those films, like Maleficent, received less than stellar reviews, but both were also budgeted higher than Maleficent — Alice is budgeted at $200 million and Oz at $215 million. Both also opened higher than Maleficent:
- Alice in Wonderland – $116.1 million opening
- Oz the Great and Powerful – $79.1 million opening
- Maleficent – $70 million opening
So, how does Maleficent‘s future look? I think it has a great chance of scoring as high as $650 million worldwide, largely because it’s a movie for a predominantly female audience (60% this weekend) and that “A” CinemaScore tells me that audience liked what they saw even if critics, whom are overwhelmingly male, didn’t.
One thing to look at will be next weekend’s drop as both Alice and Oz enjoyed less than 50% second weekend drops, something that has not been common among this year’s big budget features.
Seth MacFarlane‘s A Million Ways to Die in the West fell way, way short of predictions. In fact, just shy of half of what both Laremy and the readers predicted, coming in with $17 million and a “B” CinemaScore, neither of which bode well for its future prospects. Fortunately, it has somewhere around a $40 million budget so there is little financial damage to speak of.
X-Men: Days of Future Past fell 64% as expected, finishing the weekend with $32.6 million in its sophomore session and $162 million cume.
Coming in fourth was Godzilla, dropping another 60%, coming in with $12.2 million raising its cume to $174 million, which is great, but wow are these films getting increasingly front-loaded, especially with one blockbuster after another.
Expanding into a few more theaters this weekend, Alejandro Jodorowsky‘s The Dance of Reality came in with $30,275 on eight screens. The film expands into the top ten markets next weekend and I’m hoping to finally watch it this week and have a review for you before Friday.
Next weekend sees another male-targeted big budget movie hitting theaters in the Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt sci-fi actioner Edge of Tomorrow, which has received great reviews and could mean big numbers for not only that film, but could mean a great hold for Maleficent. Of course, The Fault in Our Stars is targeting a female audience of its own, though thankfully Maleficent is more family oriented so it could be interesting.
