Hollywood is not a place for women. Well, that’s what the overall sentiment feels like. From the lack of female directors to actresses not getting work after a certain age (as if they were townsfolk in Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”). But then something funny happened on the way to the forum. Angelina Jolie, the latter half of the “Brangelina” combo with hubby Brad Pitt – seriously, are they still referred in that connotation? – had her biggest opening this past weekend with Disney’s re-imaging of Sleeping Beauty in Maleficient. With mixed reviews but positive remarks for Jolie’s portrayal of the title character, the film opened to an estimated $70 million. This is a little more than a decade after her first big leading role as Laura Croft: Tomb Raider opened at $47.7 million. She’s been in a number of $50 and $60 million openings with voice-only roles in Shark Tale and Kung Fu Panda. Both Wanted and Mr. and Mrs. Smith opened north of $50 million, and then there’s Salt with $36 million.
Angelina Jolie is similar to her husband, Brad Pitt, and Johnny Depp with the amount of pull they have overseas. All you have to do is look at the performance of the Clint Eastwood film Changeling. Starring Jolie, the film made $35 million in the U.S. but internationally grossed $77 million more. The film doesn’t have the material that screams box office smash (it’s a period drama with themes like child endangerment, female disempowerment, and political corruption). Yet, Jolie is a global brand due to activities not directly related to acting. Still, people will go out and watch her in films in like The Tourist (co-starring Johnny Depp), taking a $67 million domestic release to more than $275 million worldwide.
In Hollywood, actresses seems to reach an expiration date when it comes to leading roles, but it seems that the opening weekend success of Maleficent might be a new direction for her in terms starring roles. Then again, the film did have the Disney advertising machine working in her favor. Overseas the film added $100 million to give it a worldwide three-day total of $170 million. In a summer where it seems typical where one new release has a sizable drop the week following (like 60-plus percent drops), Maleficent could have some legs and entertain older kids (not really a movie for little ones) until the How to Train Your Dragon sequel opens in a few weeks.
And about those sizable drops for big summer blockbusters X-Men: Days of Future Past, dropped 64% in its second weekend, a pattern that followed Godzilla (which dropped another 60% from its previous weekend) and The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (which is on pace to become the lowest-grossing film in the series, and that includes Sam Raimi’s original series). As I’ve written before, the start of the summer is so frontloaded in terms of titles that they seems to be beating up on one another thus causing no sustainability in the marketplace. With so many special-effects laden releases it’s easy to lose track, but it allows a comedy like Neighbors to find a nice groove in terms of viewers. Also helping its case is its cost to success ratio ($18 million to $207 million worldwide and growing).
Seth MacFarlane, who was built an animated empire thanks to Family Guy, American Dad and others, struck gold in 2012 when he directed the live-action comedy Ted, starring Mark Wahlberg and Mila Kunis, and a talking plush bear for which he provided the voice. After a stint hosting the Academy Awards got mixed results, MacFarlane returned to live-action comedy this time the western-themed A Million Ways to Die in the West. The problem is that he was the lead and should stick to being behind-the-scenes, because it misfired on all cylinders. Everyone wants to recreate the magic of Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles, but it’s not going to happen. End of story. The bad reviews and mixed audience response gave it a lowly $17 million three-day total and a third place finish.
As blockbusters like X-Men and Godzilla take massive drops it has allowed the aforementioned Neighbors and surprisingly Adam Sandler comedy Blended keep its head above water with nominal drops in terms of viewers. Look for these comedies to stick around in the top 10 for a few more weeks.
Other respectable numbers can be found at the bottom of the top 10 with Disney’s Million Dollar Arm, which should at least make its production budget back (though I want to see how it performs in a foreign market like India), and Jon Favreau’s Chef. This platform release (only playing on 624 screens) only dropped 11% this weekend and saw its overall B.O. increase to a near $7 million total.
01. Maleficent – $70,000,00
02. X-Men: Days of Future Past – $32,600,000 ($162,069,000)
03. A Million Ways to Die in the West – $17,069,000
04. Godzilla (2014) – $12,225,000 ($174,657,000)
05. Blended – $8,425,000 ($29,632,000)
06. Neighbors – $7,715,000 ($128,601,000)
07. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 – $3,775,000 ($192,730,000)
08. Million Dollar Arm – $3,700,000 ($28,097,000)
09. Chef – $2,009,000 ($6,924,000)
10. The Other Woman (2014) – $1,425,000 ($81,112,000)
