Despite Winter Storm Gerri (why you gotta name a blizzard after Ginger Spice?!) shutting down many theaters in the Midwest and Northeast, audiences elsewhere still wore pink to check out the musical adaptation of Mean Girls. Grossing $33.2 million, this picture took the top spot over the four-day Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend.
It appears this version of Mean Girls is playing on nostalgia, as mostly non-teens turned out for it. However, audiences aren’t finding it quite that fetch, with a B CinemaScore and three stars via PostTrak. Its Rotten Tomatoes audience score is a lackluster 67%, while its critical score is also not great at 71%.
The problem? Most people didn’t realize this was a musical! The trailers completely omitted any songs from the show and didn’t depict people dancing. Studios have taken similar approaches to marketing Wonka and The Color Purple. In recent years, musicals like West Side Story and In the Heights have flopped. It seems the masses are just not into musicals, so the studios are kind of bait-and-switching audiences into seeing them.
Even so, this new Mean Girls could leg out over the coming weeks as nothing major is opening. It’s also following along the lines of “pink” movies like Barbie and Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, which skew largely female. This proves that women are still fans of theatrical films that cater to them. This is in contrast to The Marvels, which despite being directed by a woman and starring four female actors in the lead roles, still came across as part of a male-skewing franchise and drew mostly male viewers. (The few there were.)
And speaking of male viewers, the #2 movie of the weekend served as counterprogramming to Mean Girls — the David Ayer-directed, Jason Statham-starring action flick The Beekeeper. This film took in $19M over four days.
Audience reaction is actually better than that of Mean Girls. It got a B+ via CinemaScore and 84% positive via PostTrak. Its Rotten Tomatoes audience score is an explosive 94%, while critics don’t care for it with a 69%.
Interestingly, worldwide The Beekeeper is the #1 movie, earning $37M versus Mean Girls‘ $34M. Yeah, Mean Girls only earned $2M from international markets, but that’s not such a huge surprise as American comedies typically don’t translate to other cultures, whereas action movies are universal.
After reigning supreme for three out of four weeks, Wonka has slipped to #3 in its fifth frame, earning another $10.88M over four days. However, globally, this musical has crossed the $500M mark, which is mighty impressive.
Meanwhile, Migration is hanging in at #4 as the only family animated film on the market right now.
Remarkably, the rom-com Anyone But You is still chugging along, thanks to great word of mouth. A big portion of its audience was siphoned away by Mean Girls, but it still took in an additional $8.255M, bringing its domestic tally to $56.4M. It’s trending just slightly higher than the George Clooney/Julia Roberts rom-com Ticket to Paradise which ended its domestic run with $68.2M. It’s possible that this Glen Powell/Sydney Sweeney feature could surpass that within a few weeks, as, once again, nothing much is coming out.
Here is the Top Five:
- Mean Girls (Paramount) – 3-day $28M/ 4-day $33.2M/ Wk 1
- The Beekeeper (Amazon MGM) – 3-day $16.8M/ 4-day $19/ Wk 1
- Wonka (Warner Bros.) – 3-day $8.38M/ 4-day $10.88M /Total $178.69M/ Wk 5
- Migration (Illumination/Universal) – 3-day $6.19M/ 4-day $8.3M/ Total $87.8M/ Wk 4
- Anyone But You (Sony) – 3-day $6.94M/ 4 day $8.255M/ Total $56.4M/ Wk 4
Once again, nothing major is opening next weekend, so there may be some shifting of the Top Five, but expect the same movies to show up.
Did you wear pink to see Mean Girls? Or did you watch Jason Statham shoot a bunch of folks in The Beekeeper? Is there anything else you are looking forward to?
