Monday Morning Quarterback
By BOP Staff
June 10, 2014
Kim Hollis: A year ago at this time, I would have expected The Fault in Our Stars to be an indie release on limited screens. It felt much closer to something like The Spectacular Now or Perks of Being a Wallflower than any sort of major release. I didn’t really even change my opinion when I read the book itself, but in the run up to the film’s release, I began to realize that it had a massive, dedicated audience. Most of them are young females, yes, but it didn’t end with them. There were signs across all social media outlets that The Fault in Our Stars would be a phenomenon. This release was handled masterfully, from the casting to the marketing to the unique strategy of the $25 tickets on Thursday night for the interactive experience. I really am intrigued to see what the next iteration might be.
David Mumpower: What I have loved about The Fault in Our Stars thus far is that it has been such a wild card. Literally nobody had a firm grasp on how the film would perform. When Divergent was released, I noted in this forum that I expected the John Green adaptation to be every bit as popular if not more so. On Saturday, I stated that I would be surprised if the movie earned less than $150 million. Only 24 hours later, I realized that I was going to be surprised. Even over the weekend, the box office of The Fault in Our Stars was a bumpy ride.
While I am not surprised by the opening weekend and am one of the few people on this planet who can say that it earned LESS than I expected, I am still dazzled by it. We are discussing a film that was unequivocally in the black after its first day in theaters. The number of times that happens is small enough; the number of times it happens with a film with an eight figure production budget is miniscule. Fox deserves a ton of credit for picking the perfect novel to adapt, the right actress to frontline the cast and the perfect usage of Divergent as cover fire/reputation building to enhance the profile of this tearjerker. I consider The Fault in Our Stars to be a seminal project for Millennial teenage girls as well as the closest thing we have had to The Notebook since that film’s release a decade ago. This release is as pure a win for Hollywood as there has been in 2014. And 2014 has been a really strong year for movies on the whole.
Max Braden: A couple days before release I had settled on predicting $47 million, but a month prior to that I would have guessed one-third that number. It simply wasn't on my radar at all until I happened to ask a friend's daughter (fourth grade) which movies she wanted to see this summer, and she said only one: The Fault in Our Stars. When a pre-teen is that focused on a single title, impressive things can result. I have to assume the reader base was pretty large prior to the movie.
Kim Hollis: This is Shailene Woodley's second $45 million+ opening weekend of 2014. Is it fair to compare her to Jennifer Lawrence or are we only doing that because Lawrence has been so dazzlingly impressive? Can we consider Woodley's star to be rising in a similar trajectory?
Edwin Davies: I think it's a fair comparison because both are talented young actresses who achieved tremendous success in franchises after breaking through in acclaimed, Oscar-nominated independent films, and both are definitely on upward trajectories. However, I don't think Woodley's will be as precipitous as Lawrence's has been, primarily because her franchise has nowhere near the cultural cache or critical support that The Hunger Games has, and unless Insurgent is drastically better than Divergent I can't see her becoming as big of a draw, and it might be a few years before she nabs an Oscar nomination of her own. Having said that, she'll probably still be a massive star, but it may be a case she becomes The Rolling Stones to Lawrence's The Beatles.
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