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Paramount‘s new twist on Mean Girls arrived on tracking today and let’s just say it’s not just hot with the cool girls. With double digit in unaided awareness among older and younger women over and under 25, the feature take of the Tina Fey scripted Broadway musical is looking at a $27M+ opening over the four-day MLK holiday.
Note that unaided is that portion of audience polling whereby the respondents organically cite a movie title they’re interested in seeing, and aren’t prompted by a pollster. What’s clear here is that the Mean Girls brand is extremely strong. Paramount is just beginning to get their Mean Girls campaign underway three weeks before the pic’s opening on Jan. 12.
A $27M+ or even $30M opening is a great start for a comedy aimed at women in the post-Covid era. Also consider the fact that there are several Christmas titles that haven’t opened yet on tracking such as Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom and The Color Purple, so for a movie like Mean Girls to break through the fray is a head-turner. Mean Girls was originally set to go direct to Paramount+, however, the Melrose lot pivoted that distribution strategy to the big screen.
Earlier this year, young-skewing genre pic M3GAN launch in the pre-MLK frame to $30.4M and continued on to a 4-day over the holiday of $21.7M. While that movie isn’t exactly the exact comp as it’s an original horror movie, pre-Covid Pitch Perfect 3 which did $26.4M over its 4-day Christmas weekend in 2017 is one.
In the Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr directed Mean Girls, new student Cady Heron (Angourie Rice) is welcomed into the top of the social food chain by the elite group of popular girls called “The Plastics,” ruled by the conniving queen bee Regina George (Reneé Rapp) and her minions Gretchen (Bebe Wood) and Karen (Avantika). However, when Cady makes the major misstep of falling for Regina’s ex-boyfriend Aaron Samuels (Christopher Briney), she finds herself prey in Regina’s crosshairs. As Cady sets to take down the group’s apex predator with the help of her outcast friends Janis (Auli’i Cravalho) and Damian (Jaquel Spivey), she must learn how to stay true to herself while navigating the most cutthroat jungle of all: high school. Also starring in the movie are Mean Girls alums Fey, Tim Meadows. Jon Hamm, Jenna Fischer, Busy Philipps and Ashley Park also star.
Tickets went on sale for Mean Girls last week. On Jan 10 there’s ‘On Wednesdays We Wear Pink Early Access Screening Event’ in advance of the pic’s opening in select theaters around the country at 7PM.
Paramount celebrated Mean Girls Day on Oct. 3 and stoked the fanbase today by launching the original 2004 movie on TikTok — in 23 parts. October 3 also doubled as Mean Girls Day and National Boyfriend Day. The studio grew the TikTok handle for Mean Girls organically to a massive near half million.
Meanwhile, Bucket Listers city guide, the platform to find the best things to do in cities around the U.S., which has a reach of 15M+, are planning to a new Mean Girls Experience. Following the viral sold out success of the Malibu Barbie Cafe and Golden Girls Kitchen, the brand is giving fans a chance to experience North Shore High School like never before in LA on Jan. 12 and NYC on Jan. 19.
The Mean Girls Experience will be a fast-casual restaurant of chef driven cafeteria style fare with a menu by Master Chef semi-finalist Chef Becky Brown including the Burn Book Burger Sliders, the Stab Caesar Salad, and 1 3 5 Acai Bowl as well as desserts such as the Kälteen Brownie, Rainbow + Smiles Cake, Is Butter a Carb? Cookies, and the Fetch Strudel.
The original Mean Girls movie directed by Mark Waters and penned by Fey off of Rosalind Wiseman’s novel; grossed over $130M worldwide and blasted off the careers of Rachel McAdams and Amanda Seyfried while also repping a box office hit for Lindsay Lohan at the time.