The winner
Frozen’s stupendous $1.27bn worldwide take was bound to prompt an escalation for the Disney Princess brand – the one female-focused component of its bulging franchise slate – and Kenneth Branagh’s Cinderella adaptation is the next instalment. Close in style and tone to the 1950 animation (whose $85m US gross would be worth $824.2m today), it’s opened almost neck-and-neck ($67.9m) with Frozen ($67.4m) and Maleficent ($69.4m), though behind Alice in Wonderland ($116.1m). Perfectly sound, considering it lacks the star casting of the latter two – and surely a promise of a firm $200m+ US base for the film’s international run.
But how far can Joseph Campbell fairytale archetypes and laudatory reviews take Cinderella at the global box-office ball? Having relative newcomer Lily James in the lead role, rather than someone of Angelina Jolie’s firepower as with Maleficent, feels like a stumbling block: Cinderella’s overseas unveiling ($63.7m) is, unsurprisingly, 62% of Maleficent’s ($100.6m), but over 31 territories to Maleficent’s 43. In bigger markets such as Mexico, Russia and Italy, it has opened lower than the Jolie film, but a swath of No 1s across Asia – including a $25m bow in China, ahead of Maleficent’s $22m – show potential. The new film’s slower-burning release pattern and a fine-boned traditionalism, very aligned with the mainstream, might allow it to eventually match Jolie’s $758.4m box-office devilry. Anything further would require the kind of fairy-godmother-style intervention presumably responsible for Japan’s ridiculous ($249m) box-office contribution to Frozen – which pushed it, like Alice in Wonderland, into the realm of the $1bn mega-hit. But Cinderella isn’t looking too shabby in their company at the moment. A live-action Beauty and the Beast, with Emma Watson as Belle, the Frozen sequel, and Moana!, about a feisty Polynesian girl-explorer, will be the next princesses marching out for Disney.
The grey dollar
The Exotic Marigold Hotel, with the sequel already having clocked up $46.7m from just 18 territories in three weeks, looks to have poured firm franchise foundations. Another dollop of Indian vibrancy, and an Expendables-style cadre of becardiganed acting talent – Smith, Dench, Imrie, Nighy, Wilton, plus Gere – mean that number two, with nearly two-thirds of its international footprint still to come, is holding steady for something in the vicinity of the first’s unexpected $136.8m worldwide take. We really shouldn’t be surprised: the spending power of the baby-boomer demographic has been obvious for some time, and the film industry is finally producing the material to match.
Rolling out initially in developed markets where the population skews more to upper-age ranges, Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel has opened slightly short of its predecessor in Australia (Marigold 1: $3.6m; Marigold 2: $3.1m) and New Zealand (M1: 555K; M2: 496K). But Fox Searchlight’s franchise has grown here in the UK (M1: $3.5m; M2: $5.8m), where it’s now on a sprightly total of $17.6m; and more importantly, it looks to be doing the same in the US, with a passable 34% drop this frame on another improved (M1: $6.3m; M2: $8.5m) debut. Marigold’s heart may be in India, but the franchise’s future is really in the US; it may be the first conscious attempt at a seniors-centric film brand, but there are enough standalone successes catering to the age group over the last decade to suggest that the first outing’s $46.4m US take is small fry if the material connects right. Nancy Meyer’s starry autumnal dramedies Something’s Gotta Give ($124m domestic) and It’s Complicated ($112m), as well as the more action-orientated Wild Hogs ($168m) and Space Cowboys ($90m), all did exactly that, albeit with the help of the piledriver studio backing that the Brit-originated Marigold Hotel may not have received. That could change if the sequel posts improved figures in America; a big ask in emerging markets, judging by weak openings in the likes of Russia ($192K).
The pipes are calling
Taken 3: $39.2m; Non-Stop: $28m; A Walk Among the Tombstones: $12.7m; Run All Night: $11m. All the evidence you need is there, re: US opening weekends, that Liam Neeson’s run as a late-life action man is coming to a natural conclusion. Nor does Run All Night – Neeson’s second collaboration with director Jaume Collet-Serra after last year’s $222.8m-grosser Non-Stop – hint that it can counterbalance the trend overseas: Neeson’s numbers in the UK (Non-Stop: $4.4m; Run All Night: $1.3m), France ($3.4m; $1.1m) and the UAE (941K; 731K) have all fallen. The problem is obvious: a couple too many outings in too short a space of time as his trademark weary righteous-avenger, the Charles Bronson it’s OK to like. Neeson’s recent star persona has been rooted in a certain grizzled authenticity, but simply dropping Danny Boy over scenes of macho repartee in the trailer, as Run All Night does, speaks of a certain low-hanging fruit approach. The film doesn’t seem conceived with the same kind of global appeal as the Taken franchise, and a smash-and-grab release schedule – the US and UK creating an early March splash for a busy overseas weekend with most major territories a month later – reflects that. The trend of tooling up seasoned dramatic leads as action stars looks set to continue regardless, with the release of Sean Penn’s The Gunman coming this Friday on both sides of the Atlantic. As for Neeson, there’s always the Third Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.
Spy hard
A last glance from this column at Matthew Vaughn’s Kingsman: The Secret Service, which has exceeded all expectations to run up a $277.3m total. That makes it the year’s third highest-grossing film so far. It’s a fantastic result, not only confirming that the tropes with Bondian lineage remain worth tapping (which bodes well for Paul Feig’s Spies, currently getting rave reviews at SXSW), but also that the spirit of knowing genre deconstruction is now understood at a global level, in a similar way to how The Grand Budapest Hotel showed that Wes Anderson’s “quirk” had finally been assimilated into the mainstream. At any rate, Kingsman has grossed some impressive figures in unlikely locales, such as South Korea’s $36.3m, its top territory outside the US. Sterling stuff.
The rest of the world
Chinese new year stragglers From Vegas to Macau 2 and Wolf Totem, in 12th and 13th on the global chart, have now accrued $150m and $106m respectively – making them that country’s ninth and 25th highest grossing ever. Other than them, serial-killer thriller The Deal – starring Memories of Murder’s Kim Sang-kyung and cut from typical Korean revenge cloth – halted Kingsman’s No 1 run there, taking $3.9m and 15th place globally.
The future
It’s been quiet on the young-adult front since last September’s The Maze Runner, but youth-victimisation season begins again in 2015 with the 60-country day-and-date drop for Insurgent – sequel to last year’s Divergent. Shailene Woodley and Theo James return as non-conformist Matrix rejects Triss and Four, as well as Ansel Elgort, Woodley’s co-star in 2014’s other YA breakout The Fault in Our Stars. China, as with Cinderella, gets a simultaneous release with the US. Speaking of Cinders, she expands into a handful more territories, including South Korea and India. And Luc Besson sidekick Pierre Morel tries to do for Sean Penn what he did for Liam Neeson in Taken: The Gunman, as mentioned above, drops the star of Milk and Mystic River deep into the Republic of Asskickistan. What Meryl Streep is to “sexy blonde chicks”, The Gunman is to the average action flick, says its star – not renowned for mincing his words. Judge for yourself as it opens in around 20 countries, including the US, UK and parts of Scandinavia and the Middle East.
Top 10 global box office, 13-15 March
1. (New) Cinderella, $131.5m from 32 territories – 48.4% international; 51.6% US
2. Kingsman: The Secret Service, $19.9m from 57 territories. $277.3m cum – 61.3% int; 38.7% US
3. Chappie, $19.4m from 69 territories. $56.7m cum – 58.9% int; 41.1% US
4. Focus, $19.3m from 62 territories. $101.7m cum – 56.7% int; 43.3% US
5. (New) Run All Night, $17.6m from 20 territories – 37.5% int; 62.5% US
6. Big Hero 6, $17.2m from 24 territories. $632.8m cum – 65% int; 35% US
7. Fifty Shades of Grey, $11.2m from 61 territories. $546.5m cum – 70.5% int; 29.5% US
8. American Sniper, $10.9m from 58 territories. $517.2m cum – 34% int; 66% US
9. Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, $9.8m from 18 territories. $47m cum – 61.5% int; 38.5% US
10. Jupiter Ascending, $9.2m from 38 territories. $171.2m cum – 73.1% int; 26.9% US
• Thanks to Rentrak. Some of this week’s figures are based on estimates; all historical figures unadjusted, unless otherwise stated.
