For most movies, bigger-than-expected Thursday midnight shows are a great start to an opening weekend. For "Where the Wild Things Are," they may have been a mixed blessing.
Warner Bros.' adaptation of the classic children's book collected $700,000 before the sun rose Friday, a sign that positive reviews and nostalgia were driving strong interest from adults, particularly younger ones. The flip side is that despite the movie's PG rating, families with children younger than 12 made up only 43% of the audience. Adults 18 and older made up the same percentage, with teenagers accounting for the rest.
Dramatic evidence of that trend came Saturday, when "Wild Things" ticket sales rose only 2% from Friday. Family movies usually see a big boost in Saturday grosses as parents take kids to matinees. For "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs," for instance, the jump was 62%.
"With adults it's doing extremely well and with families, it's mixed depending upon the taste of the family," said Dan Fellman, president of domestic distribution for Warner Bros.
On the bottom line, there was little for major studios to complain about this weekend. "Wild Things" opened to a solid $32.5 million in the U.S. and Canada, according to studio estimates, while overall ticket sales surged 41% from a year ago as "Paranormal Activity" and "Law Abiding Citizen" played extremely well.
"The box office really blew up this weekend," said Kyle Davies, head of distribution for Overture Films, which distributed "Law Abiding Citizen."
But coming in No. 1 on such a strong weekend may not be enough to reassure backers of "Wild Things," which cost about $100 million to make and was delayed by a year because of reshooting.
A bigger family audience would probably indicate that the movie was on its way to hit status, since films successful with families tend to decline much more slowly than ones popular with young adults.
Despite that, Warner Bros. spent a significant chunk of its "Wild Things" marketing budget on adults, apparently accepting the view held by many critics that director Spike Jonze's adaptation was too morose for those the same age as the movie's protagonist.
Warner Bros. paid for 25% of the film, Village Roadshow Pictures covered 50% and Legendary Pictures took care of the balance. The financiers benefited from foreign tax incentives that brought the movie's net cost down to $80 million.
