Women's Media Nation | Social, political, and cultural issues relating to women

Women’s films kicking butt at the box office

posted by Women & Hollywood
Tuesday, November 17, 2009 at 5:40pm CST

So Precious rolled out further this past weekend and continued to astound at the box office. The movie made it to number three for the week grossing over 5.8 million in just 174 theatres.

A little perspective: The Men Who Stared At Goats starring George Clooney made a little less than Precious coming in at 4th place. But that movie played in 2,453 theatres. Precious grossed over $33,000 per theatre and the number 1 movie of the week 2012, which made over $65 million, grossed a little over $19,000 per theatre.

Precious will roll out further this weekend onto over 600 screens in 100 markets.

Here’s what the boxofficeguru.com’s Gitesh Pandya had to say about Precious via Gold Derby:

Its $35,000 average proves that it’s not a one-weekend wonder that worked in just a few top markets but something that will build in the weeks ahead into a surefire blockbuster appealing to moviegoers in towns big and small.

Precious is one of only two films this entire decade to reach the Top 5 with less than 200 theaters. The other was ‘Paranormal Activity’ last month.

Awards contender ‘Brokeback Mountain’ opened four years ago with a similar limited bow with an eye-popping $100,000-plus average. It expanded to 69 sites in its second weekend and grossed $2.5 million for a $36,355 average. The fact that Precious generated a similar average from more than double the number of theaters is nothing short of remarkable, even when factoring in four years of ticket-price increases. So this one is well-positioned to keep growing since the publicity it generates in two weeks of limited play will get a broader audience to get off the sidelines by the time it opens wide.

And let’s not forget about New Moon which opens this Friday. The film is the advanced ticket record holder at Fandango beating out Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and The Dark Knight. And Twilight is fifth on the list.

So that means that two of the top five films on Fandango’s list for advanced tickets are for films about and fueled by women. People are buying multiple tickets in advance and in a fandango survey, 22% said that mothers and daughters are going to see the movie together.

Both these movies are lightning in a bottle. The movie business needs to figure out how to build on this and not say it’s a fluke. But, keep in mind that both films are directed by men. (Twilight’s script is written by Melissa Rosenberg and the novels of Precious and Twilight are written by women – Sapphire and Stephenie Meyer.)

The next person who says that women aren’t a market is going to get my foot shoved up their ass.

‘Precious’ is truly precious at the box office; $2.5 million is ‘remarkable’ (Gold Derby)