Scott Mendelson: Dear John Scores $32 Million for First Place, and Why Its Defeat of Avatar Isn’t a Gender Politics Story

Dear John opened at number one this weekend, with a stellar $32.4 million debut weekend. That gives the picture a mediocre 2.3x weekend multiplier, but the first three days alone puts the picture well ahead of its $25 million budget. More importantly, this is the biggest weekend in Super Bowl weekend history, as well as the biggest opening weekend of all-time for a pure romantic drama. The film played to an 84% female crowd, and 64% of the audience was under 21. This is the first real test of opening weekend mettle for Amanda Seyfried and Channing Tatum, and both passed with flying colors. Of course, this number raises new questions about how much credit Tatum deserved for the $54.7 million debut of GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra. Conversely, as I alluded to last September, one wonders how much better Jennifer’s Body could have opened with had the marketing focused even a little on co-star Seyfried and not just Megan Fox.   This also makes Nicholas Sparks the first brand-name author since the mid-90s heyday of Michael Crichton, Stephen King, and John Grisham.  Regardless, this is a smashing debut and should weather the storm of Valentine’s Day: The Movie as this far more serious love story will prove solid counter-programming to the overtly comedic all-star mush-fest (or as I’ve heard the film called: Gary Marshall Calls In All of His Favors Before He Dies: The Movie).

Yes, yes, Dear John dethroned Avatar at the top of the box office over Super Bowl weekend. Wow… a film’s opening weekend managed to exceed another film’s eighth weekend. I got into this in some detail in yesterday’s box office piece, but I personally think that the whole ‘Dear John beat Avatar‘ story is relatively pointless. And I certainly enjoy the irony of pundits jumping up and down over the fact that a very female-driven film defeated another film that itself was playing very well for women. Avatar writer/director James Cameron is a man. Dear John author Nicolas Sparks and director Lasse Hallstrom are also men. Both films involve (to differing degrees of emphasis) romantic drama in the shadow of war. Both films involve handsome but somewhat bland male leads (Sam Worthington and Channing Tatum) being out-acted and generally outclassed by their female partners (Zoe Saldana and Amanda Seyfried). Trying to spin the weekend’s box office as ‘the girls smacking down the boys on Super Bowl weekend’ is not only relatively false, but awfully condescending and sexist to boot. It’s basically saying: Wow, a ‘girl movie’ was able to compete in a male dominated marketplace, that’s so shocking and no one could have predicted that cause girl movies are lame! Besides, we all know that Channing Tatum will walk away with the lion’s share of the credit, just as the media bent over backwards to give Ryan Reynolds credit for The Proposal. Tatum will get his pick of franchises, while Seyfried will get to choose between being the token love interest/damsel in distress in one of said franchises or starring in another installment of I’m Nothing Without A Man.

But weep not for James Cameron, for Avatar still pulled in another $23.6 million. Having crossed the $600 million mark and overtaken Titanic as the top domestic grosser of all-time, Avatar now sits with a massive $630 million domestic gross. The film had its second-biggest weekend plunge yet, dropping a whole 24% in weekend eight. Still, the comparatively large drop lends credence to the idea that the film was playing very well with females, hence it was hurt by direct demo competition. The film’s new worldwide total is a whopping $2.204 billion, or just short of the magic $2.39 billion mark (whereby it has doubled the worldwide take of every other film ever made save Titanic). I suppose if you wanted to nitpick, you could state that Avatar was number one for a mere seven weekends while Titanic was number one for fifteen weekends. As many of you probably recall, Titanic was number one all the way up until April 3rd, when it was dethroned by Lost In Space (quick – what are the two connections between Lost in Space and Dear John?). Like Avatar’s close calls with Sherlock Holmes and The Book of Eli, Titanic actually lost the Friday race three times during its spree, to US Marshals, The Man in the Iron Mask, and the re-release of Grease respectively.

It now shares its top in the top-ten for consequtive number-one weekends with Ghostbusters and On Golden Pond, and the number 12 spot for total number one weekends with the Henry Fonda melodrama. What’s slightly more troubling (relative to a picture that’s already the biggest moneymaker of all time) is that Avatar just barely beat Titanic’s $23 million record for the biggest eighth weekend. By next weekend, barring a miracle, Avatar will likely start grossing less on a weekend to weekend basis than Titanic (the doomed ocean romancer actually went up 22% for a $28 million Valentine’s Day-infused eighth weekend). Still, the movie is going to take a huge hit on March 5th anyway, when it loses its IMAX and many of its 3D screens to Tim Burton’s Return to Oz, I mean Alice in Wonderland. The goal from here on out is to cross the fabled $700 million mark and try for $2.5 billion worldwide before all is said and done. Point being, Avatar may have lost its number one weekend ranking, but the one-of-a-kind phenom is still ‘king of the world’ for all intents and purposes.

For the rest of the weekend rundown, including how the other new opener did, as well as Oscar bumps, holdover numbers, and the plethora of limited release debuts, go to Mendelson’s Memos.

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