NEW YORK – In a box-office battle that pitted young versus old, female against male, modest drama versus big-budget spectacle, the teenage romance The Fault in Our Stars easily bested the time-shifting Tom Cruise action film Edge of Tomorrow.
With a $48.2 million domestic debut, The Fault in Our Stars thumped the $29.1 million opening for Edge of Tomorrow, according to studio estimates Sunday. It did so with a far less seasoned star in Shailene Woodley and a $12 million budget a fraction the size of that for Edge of Tomorrow, made for approximately $175 million.
The results offered a stark illustration of shifting box-office trends. Whereas big-budget, male-oriented action films with stars like Cruise have long ruled the day at North American multiplexes, those movies are increasingly under siege from films ignited by passionate young female moviegoers.
The Fault in Our Stars, a highly-anticipated adaptation of John Green’s bestselling book, was in some ways another example of the power of young-adult fiction. But unlike Twilight or The Hunger Games, The Fault in Our Stars isn’t about sci-fi or fantasy, but is rather a more naturalistic drama about young love and cancer.
Edge of Tomorrow showed a lot of box-office muscle overseas. The film made $82 million internationally, making most of that in China, Korea and Russia.
The competition — fairy tale Maleficent, starring Angelina Jolie — slid to second place in its second week with $33.5 million. With a two-week global sum of $335.5 million, Maleficent has performed well, but it remains to be seen if it can be a real money-maker for Disney, which spent an estimated $180 million to make it, plus huge amounts to market it.
Made-in-Montreal flick X-Men Days of Future Past earned another $14.7 million to rank fourth, followed by A Million Ways to Die in the West, which made $7.2 million.
BELOW: Watch Tom Cruise talk to Global News at the Canadian premiere of Edge of Tomorrow.
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