I don’t know if those comparisons are fair. For Harry Potter, that’s 7 books stretched over a period of what, 15 years? Which were no doubt helped by the success of the movie.
I saw a feature about the opening on ABC’s World News Now. Apparently she has no interest in doing TV interviews, but they had a bit of interview footage that Scholastic produced, and appeared to be a study guide about the book, to get kids thinking critically. In the footage she asked “What is your relationship to reality TV versus your relationship to the news?”
We just got back home 25 minutes ago from the midnight showing. The movie theatre we went to had five screens, and they were all packed. I am really glad I read the books before I went; our daughter and I had some great conversations about the stuff they changed or left out. I thought the movie was well done.
I’m going to guess that it makes something like $153 million over this weekend. It’s gearing up to be big.
I’ve read the books and I’m interested in seeing it, however if I was just going off of the ads, I’m not so sure I would. The ads (at least that I’ve seen) seem fairly bland and don’t explain a lot.
Fifth biggest opening day ever; biggest for a non-sequel
It’s already made more money than John Carter has made domestically, for a third of the budget.
Ouch.
I read that Disney projects a $200 million loss on “John Carter”.
I loved this kind of stuff when I was in my early to mid-teens, although I don’t think any of it was YA fiction (1984, Brave New World, Alas Babylon, The Sheep Look Up, et cetera). I think it resonates with the dramatic adolescent worldview on some level, and any kid with any level of sophistication is going to be disturbed and fascinated by what they read about world events. My daughter likes these books, but I haven’t noticed that she’s become excessively freaked out or gloomy abut the world. What is it that makes you uncomfortable, exactly? Juvenile movie and books are loaded with dead parents, but I don’t see generations of kids freaked out that their parents are going to die.
Still just an estimate, as the Sunday box office numbers obviously aren’t in yet. Still, it pulled in nearly $120M on Friday and Saturday; I can’t help but wonder if their $36M estimate for Sunday box office isn’t pessimistic …
Maybe they should re-title it “Hunger To Make Our Money Back Game” and re-release it in a few months.