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At a time when theatrical is looking to distinguish itself with more prolific fare than the factory conveyor belt of humdrum product coming from streaming, it’s with great upset to hear that Lionsgate’s feature adaptation of Judy Blume’s pinnacle 1970 novel Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret fell greatly short at the box office with a $6.8M opening; below both the $7M-$9M that the studio was seeing, and the more bullish $10M+ that rivals spotted.
However, figuring out what went wrong here with Judy Blume’s first big screen Hollywood foray (her son Lawrence Blume previously directed an indie take of her 1981 novel, Tiger Eyes, which did $27K), which won over critics (99% certified fresh) and the few who bought tickets (A CinemaScore), has less to do with the commercial potential of the pic’s genre –movies based on female-skewing bestselling novels– and more to do with the feather-fish situation of Blume’s material.
Unlike Stephen King whose novels have continually been adapted to the big screen since his early days as an author (His 1974 novel Carrie being the first to hit theaters in 1976), Blume’s literary cannon never found its way into theaters, rather TV (read, the 1978 made for TV movie based on her novel, Forever). Some of that had to do with Blume not finding the right creatives partners in Hollywood. Furthermore, her books didn’t adhere to a three act structure that’s prime for the screen.
Despite Margaret being beloved by women over 30, and Blume’s legacy, unfortunately, the big screen cultural urgency for this teenage girl rite of passage tome wasn’t there: The 13-17 year old set only repped 6% of all ticket buyers. Social media wattage on the pic was low at 66.1M followers across TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube views according to RelishMix.
Margaret‘s prime demo this weekend were older Caucasian women. Per Comscore/Screen Engine exits, 55% of Margaret ticket buyers were women over the age of 45, 70% Caucasian. That’s been a sluggish audience coming out of the pandemic.
Further complicating Margaret’s draw was the pic’s heavy young female topics, i.e. menstruation — not exactly the type of movie that’s easy to pull a boyfriend or husband into: Only 4% of the audience came with a boyfriend, while 14% brought their spouse per PostTrak.
Margaret‘s road into theaters began with The Edge of Seventeen filmmaker Kelly Fremon Craig sending Blume an impassioned email to adapt the book, with the director, and producer James L. Brooks making their pitch in person at Blume’s Key West, Fla home. Blume reportedly adored how Craig handled teenage angst in The Edge of Seventeen, that smart movie also facing its own box office hurdles, unable to pull in pre-pandemic social media obsessed teenage girls with an opening of $4.7M stateside and final domestic of $14.4M.
When the auction came up for Margaret’s rights, Lionsgate easily sprung to them as such female YA fare is in their wheelhouse, not just with blockbuster franchises like Hunger Games and Divergent, but also young adult literary sourced movies like Five Feet Apart ($13.1M opening, $45M domestic final) and the family YA title Wonder ($27.5M opening, $132.4M domestic). It made sense for Lionsgate to make a movie off of a classic girls novel from an 85-year-old author with 90 million copies sold under her belt. The author also had the most social media followers out of anyone in the cast per RelishMix this past weekend with 832K followers across all platforms. Blume was so happy with Margaret, she was an intregral part of its press tour, and has exclaimed that the movie is better than the book. When have you ever heard an author say that?
Originally, Margaret was to have a Sept. 16 theatrical release last year. Hindsight being 20/20 with fewer films on the schedule then, wouldn’t that have been prime? Not necessarily. First, we hear that Brooks and Craig were still working on the movie after a trailer dropped at CinemaCon last year. Not to mention, Margaret was playing into a potential teenage girl typhoon that being the Harry Styles starring Don’t Worry Darling (which opened to $19.3M, finaled at $45.3M; in the end no threat at all). Lionsgate pushed Margaret to the pre-summer weekend, the last frame of April this year. First, to play into Mother’s Day knowing this older audience would take time to come out, and also last summer proved to be an all boats-rise type of marketplace with female skewed counterprogramming, i.e. Elvis, and Sony’s feature take of Delia Owens’ 2018 bestseller Where the Crawdads Sing which off of a fresh face cast, busted through bad reviews with a $17.2M opening, $90.2M stateside take, and ultimately near $75M profit.
More to the point with Margaret, the problem isn’t with the genre of movies based on female bestsellers, rather the 53-year old age of the tome itself. The filmmakers stayed faithful to the 1970s setting rather than updating it, and period dramas are always an uphill battle at the box office. The female bestselling novels that have rallied at the box office, have done so within a few years of their publishing. In such cases, their audiences weren’t swayed by bad reviews or marquee casting necessarily (Haley Lu Richardson, who recently popped in the second season of HBO’s White Lotus, was a burgeoning actress still with 2019’s Five Feet Apart).
Even by pre-pandemic standards, the signs were out there that Margaret could struggle at the box office given the age of its property. Back in 2010, 20th Century Fox brought the first adaptation of a Beverly Cleary novel to theaters with Ramona and Beezus starring Selena Gomez and Joey King. The pic arrived on marquees 55 years after the first Cleary novel, Beezus and Ramona was published. Cleary too was a beloved girl’s author, but again, the novel was out of its era (the movie was positioned to a much younger tween audience than Margaret here). How much did it make? A similar result to what we saw with Margaret this weekend: $7.8M 3-day (final domestic as $26.1M).
So, how to fix a problem like Margaret? You really can’t other than making a great critically acclaimed movie for Blume fans, which is exactly what went on here. The terra firma of that alone will keep Margaret popular in its downstream ancillaries.
Yes, streaming is encroaching on cinema, and the format’s prime demo, women, have more than enough content to stay at home. Given the iconoclastic narrative of Blume’s novels, many are already finding their way to streaming in the near future, i.e. there’s an animated Russo brothers production of Superfudge for Disney+, a Netflix series based on Forever from Girlfriends creator Mara Brock Akil, and Summer Sisters at Peacock with Jenna Bush Hager.
However, Blume’s seminal novel, Margaret, was worth a quality big screen treatment.
Look, despite the annual domestic box office being ahead of 2022 at 37% with $2.65 billion, it’s clear that adult non-tentpoles are challenged. I received a note from a producer this weekend as to why I wasn’t crapping on A24’s three-hour $35M production (and $20M+ spend) of Beau Is Afraid more. The pic will be lucky to hit $10M stateside. I explained to the producer I already addressed that in last week’s column. Point is, we need to give these avant-garde and high brow movies a chance. These smaller bold swings will continue to lose money until moviegoing completely rebounds (also, as I wrote, several auteur movies always lose money in theatrical, but find lives in ancillaries, i.e. every movie that Paul Thomas Anderson has made). Yes, Air, by motion picture studio accounting standards with a $125M acquisition cost, and a $90M production budget is a money loser. However, Amazon has the Byzantine financial shopping site model to rationalize such costs. Plus, why kick a streamer in the teeth when they’re trying to get back into the theatrical distribution business? The industry needs more Amazon wide releases, and more streamers committing to long theatrical windows.
If we keep burying great cinema on streaming, then buried it will remain. At CinemaCon this past week, Martin Scorsese expressed concern about the future of filmmakers. How are they expected to find inspiration from the array of titles on a streaming menu if we keep shoving risky movies to streaming over the big screen?
“Getting younger people to enjoy the theatrical experience … on a screen that is bigger and more engaging than films they see home will make a difference,” the Oscar winning director said.
For Lionsgate this past weekend, John Wick: Chapter 4 became the highest grossing movie in the franchise at $402M. At a $30M production cost and $20M+ marketing spend, Margaret wasn’t going to break the bank, nor was it a financially irresponsible bet. The studio has the movie on a healthy 53-day theatrical window. The hope at this point is that the movie makes it to $30M+ stateside off a 5x multiple of its opening. That’s entirely possible off of the type of reviews and CinemaScore that it has; Crawdads did a 5.2 multiple off its $17.2M opening with an A- CinemaScore. At the end of the day, the quintessential movie was made to appease Blume fans for infinity.
As the old rule of thumb goes, the cost of any great art by a studio is offset by the riches made from the blockbusters on their slate.