This weekend was Seth MacFarlane’s chance to show that he could continue to be wildly successful without his tried-and-true shticks — animation and talking animals — and prove all his h8ers wrong. It didn’t work out that way. After a $54 million opening weekend for Ted and a $49 million opening for Neighbors (two recent R-rated comedies), A Million Ways To Die grossed a middling $17.1 million domestically. It only cost $40 million to make, which means it probably won’t lose money, but it’s hard to paint it as anything but a mild disappointment. It was also a terrible place to pick up chicks, with an audience that was 55% male and 72% over the age of 25. Total sausage fest.
Meanwhile, Angelina Jolie’s Maleficent earned a huge $70 million domestically ($170m including international), which was well above Snow White and the Huntsman ($56m) and Mirror Mirror ($18m) but behind Oz: The Great And Powerful ($79m). Either way, it’s a big win for Disney, and thank God, the baby Jesus cries when a giant faceless corporation doesn’t preposterous amounts of money. Expect to see a massive increase in cheekbone-based projects in the months to come.
Next week brings us Tom Cruise’s Groundhog Day-style action film, Edge of Tomorrow, and the we’re-still-trying-to-make-Shailene-Woodley-unglamorous tearjerker The Fault In Our Stars. Spoiler alert: the fault in our stars is cancer.
[via Forbes, BoxOfficeMojo]