Women are Driving Box Office Numbers
The summer movie season is full of action packed blockbusters and big special effects masterpieces – but this year is bringing a brand new trend to the box office.
Women are driving ticket sales in record numbers – and Hollywood’s pandering to the typically young male audience may be falling flat.
Women leading the way in this summer’s movies. Leading the trend is the “The Divergent Series: Insurgent” and other action-oriented, female-focused blockbusters. “Insurgent” took in an estimated $54 million during its opening weekend, and 60 percent of that audience was female. The crowd for the opening weekend of “Fifty Shades of Grey” was 67% women, and the audience for “Cinderella” was 66% women.
Although it might be easy to dismiss those numbers as a fluke, there’s a definite trend developing in moviegoers. Similar movies that were targeted at a young male audience – “Hot Tub Time Machine 2,” “Seventh Son,” “Chappie” and “Jupiter Ascending” all had less stellar performance over the same time period.
Movie execs, take note. It’s been a noticeable enough shift for movie executives and producers to take note. They’ve traditionally baked on the stability of the young male audience – particularly with the popularity of blockbuster super hero movies. However, young men are considered to be more easily distractible by other forms of entertainment – like game consoles – so the industry is considering the benefits of appealing to women for opening-week audiences.
Hollywood bouncing back. All in all, Hollywood is trying to bounce back from a rough few years. Admissions fell 6% in North America in the U.S. just in the last year, and the previous year ticket sales declined by 5%. Currently, there has been a 4% increase in ticket sales in 2015 – but there are some high-risk/high-stake summer months around the corner. With typical male-centric movies like “Ant-man” and “Mad Max: Fury Road” set to release this summer, executives may want to rethink their strategy for next summer’s movies.
