'Fault In Our Stars' Ready To Wow

By Alex Edghill

Thursday Morning Update: The Fault In Our Stars recovered well from its post-premiere dip as it rose 13% on Wednesday to 186,993 tweets, up from 165,878 tweets on Tuesday. Continuing its record-shattering theme, it was once again easily the biggest pre-release Wednesday on record for a Friday opener, hammering the one week old mark that Maleficent put up of 116,388. Maleficent relied heavily on its premiere and a red carpet incident involving Brad Pitt being hit in the face to set that mark while Stars needed no such snafu to get there, just reliance on its army of die hard fans and those around piling on for the buzz storm. Its always refreshing to see a film captivate Twitter (and indeed pop culture) such as this. Various other films have achieved this status over the past five years I have been monitoring Twitter: Paranormal Activity, Inception, and the Twilight/Hunger Games franchises come to mind. We are predicting $49 million for the film on the weekend, easily giving it the crown over the competition. While this might not be anywhere close to a June record in terms of actual dollars, it is monumental considering that it cost just $12 million to make, and I'm positive its upcoming fortunes would not be anywhere near as vast without the influence of social media. Not only has Fox done a great job in its promotion of the film, but the fans of the book have been super vocal (like fans of the aforementioned franchises) which has helped to greatly raise its awareness and profile. Because of this it has now set a new high-water mark for social media excellence that I'd be willing to bet will be around for at least the rest of the year.

The Edge Of Tomorrow had a 19% raise to 14,541 tweets on Wednesday, up from 12,222 tweets on Tuesday. By comparison, Oblivion had 3,797 tweets its Wednesday before release while Elysium had 3,862. Generally weak expansions day to day for a film in its range (less than 50,000 tweets in its release week) are a watch-out sign, but considering that it opened in 28 territories last weekend and is appealing to an older male-dominated audience I'm not as concerned about it. We are predicting $30 million for it over the weekend, giving it a slight edge over the returning Maleficent which we are pegging to ring in with $29 million. The very strong reviews should lead to solid word of mouth and a leggy run at the box office over the coming few weeks. 

Top 15 Movies for Wednesday June 4th

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