The book to film adaptation of John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars starring Shailene Woodley led the weekend box office with a pull that proved the power of YA readers.
The Fault in Our Stars made $48.2 million – above projections – between Thursday night and Sunday, making it the highest-grossing film of the weekend. The film had a budget of only $12 million, so the movie was a huge success for the studio.
In second place was Disney’s Maleficent with $33.5 million. The live-action retelling of the Sleeping Beauty villain has now made $103.9 million domestically since opening last weekend.
In third was the new Tom Cruise film Edge of Tomorrow with a $29.1 million opening. With a budget of $178 million, the film did not do as well as WB would’ve hoped.
Rounding out the top five was X-Men: Days of Future Past with $14.7 million and A Million Ways to Die in the West with $7.1 million.
The Fault in Our Stars proved that Green’s audience is huge. We expect good word of mouth and repeat viewings in theaters by passionate fans to keep the box office total growing nicely over the coming weeks.
This is also good news for other YA books. Studios will surely be looking at the success of Fault and decide to search for books they believe could be as successful.
The next Green book to be turned into a film will be Paper Towns starring Nat Wolff. On the red carpet of Fault last week, Green and Wolff spoke about adapting the 2008 novel for the big screen.
Hypable has released extensive coverage of The Fault in Our Stars movie over the past several months. In recent weeks we shared our report from the film’s set, a a list of book-to-film changes, and suggested ten films similar to Fault that we thought you’d enjoy.