Friday Box Office: Disney's 'Cinderella' Conjures $23M For $65M-$75M Weekend

Scott Mendelson
Contributor

The would-be Spring Break blitz began with a bang yesterday as Walt Disney’s Cinderella debuted with a strong $23.03 million Friday gross. That includes $2.3m worth of Friday previews. 

The $95m live-action romantic drama is of course an adaptation of the animated version of the classic fairy tale. The Kenneth Branagh-directed and Chris Weitz-written fantasy stars Lily James, Cate Blanchett, Richard Madden, Helena Bonham Carter, Stellan Skarsgård, Sophie McShera, Holliday Grainger, and Derek Jacobi. The picture debuted to sparling reviews and strong buzz thanks partially (but not remotely exclusively) to the Frozen Fever animated short that preceded it, which in turn was proceeded by the official announcement of Frozen 2. Thus even lacking a new “hook” (this is just a straight retelling of the story with no twists) or any hard star power (Lily James may be big eventually, but she’s no Angelina Jolie at this point), Cinderella debuted on in line with the previous Walt Disney “take a cartoon and make it live action” pictures of late. 

To wit, Tim Burton’s Alice In Wonderland debuted with $40.8 million in early March of 2010 on its way to a $116.4m weekend for a 2.85x weekend multiplier. Sam Raimi’s Oz: The Great and Powerful (which yes, I am aware was a prequel to a live-action fantasy which was not a Disney property) debuted with $24m on this same weekend in 2013 for an eventual $79.1m weekend (3.29x). 

The Angelina Jolie-as-Maleficent vehicle Maleficent opened with a $24.2m towards a $69.4m weekend (2.87x). If you want to toss in Universal’s Snow White and the Huntsman, that Kristen Stewart/Chris Hemsworth action fantasy debuted with a $20.4m Friday towards a $56.2m weekend (2.75x). Obviously if Cinderella ends up as “leggy” over its opening weekend as Oz: The Great and Powerful, it gets to $75m for the weekend. But it it “merely” plays like its other respective predecessors, it gets to $65m for the weekend. That said figure would be slightly more frontloaded in terms of Thursday-to-weekend grosses (3.5%, compared to 3.3% for Alice, 2.8% for Oz and SWATH, and 6% for Maleficent) only means that a few more would-be fans raced out on Thursday.

Needless to say, I am the only one who cares about this Thursday-to-weekend ratio thing, especially with numbers this big. The picture earned an A from Cinemascore and earned an A+ from audiences 35 years old and up. The picture played 77% female, 42% under 18 (A), 14% 18-24 (A-), 16% 25-34 (A), 19% 35-49 (A+), and 9% 50 and up (A+). So, using the powers of science, it looks like those jaded college kids brought the score down while the older audiences were thrilled that their would be babysitting activity/bonding activity was better than they expected. Even if the film plays a little frontloaded this weekend and ends up closer to $60m than $65m, this is still a big hit. We don’t have the overseas numbers in yet (it opened in 60% of the overseas market, including China, Mexico, Russia, Italy, and Germany) and the fact that this picture cost about half of what the other “live action animated classic reborn” pictures did means it’ll be in the relative profit zone by the end of next week.

Moreover, as stated here and elsewhere, the film is crowd pleasing and pretty darn good, so I would not be surprised by decent legs over the next month. Lions Gate Entertainment’s Divergent Series: Insurgent will be fine, as it’s playing to the fans, but I fear for DreamWorks Animation’s Home on March 27th.  There really isn’t any secret to this opening. The Disney brand name is paramount, especially when dealing with old-school fairy tales and/or female-centric entertainment for younger kids and their parents. The Disney princess allure is not something that fades away when puberty hits, as evidenced by the deluge of teen and college-aged girls I see everytime I go to Disneyland with the family. You almost never see a group of young men in line for “It’s a Small World” or “Jungle Cruise.” Critics may have carped, but general audiences were just fine with Alice In Wonderland, Oz: The Great and Powerful, and Maleficent.

The “Cinderella story” is a powerful one for all genders and all ages, be

it Fifty Shades of Grey or The Matrix.  And moreover, the new year has been heavy on adult-skewing entertainments and stuff explicitly aimed at young women has been basically absent since Annie and Into the Woods late last year. So of course now we’re getting a triple-whammy of Cinderella, Insurgent, and Home, but everyone wanted to go when the kids were (to varying degrees) out of school. That this “just the story you already know, told how you already know it” picture was able to open as well as it did makes this a case where reviews mattered and thus quality mattered. Obviously Disney would love to have more boys showing up over the next month, but this debut is more proof that you don’t need male moviegoers to make a blockbuster. This one was entirely fueled by girl-power, and they didn’t even need to invent a reason for Cinderella to wear armor or swing a sword in order to make it a hit.

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