How that would translate, making the transition from siblings to lovers, was a risk. It ended at $124.8M.Īs it was enjoying its domestic run, it moved overseas where Divergent had already played out with Woodley and Elgort playing brother and sister. The tracking showed it would open huge, but no one could have predicted how well it would: $48M when the dust cleared on that Monday morning. Pre-opening ticket sales were high and those girls ended up coming to see Fault … in packs.
Months before the film’s release, the buzz on the film was huge, especially among young girls … you know that demographic that put a little movie called Titanic over the top. Almost overnight, the YouTube views passed 20M. Why change a good thing when you have it, right? The number of people who watch the official YouTube trailer easily passed the trailers for … wait for it … Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Fox marketing executives smartly let the trailer ride for a long while. It had a perfect-as-could-get trailer devised by Cami Sargent that danced well around the dire topic of cancer to spark interest across the country.
The Fault In Our Stars also bowed after Lionsgate’s Divergent which blazed the way for these two Fault stars - both domestically but especially internationally. Incidentally, Bowen and Godfrey are also behind The Maze Runner which opens this weekend - another YA novel adapted for the big screen, albeit not as well as Fault. Erin Siminoff, the day-to-day production person, kept a watchful eye on the budget of the film, which delivered thanks to director Josh Boone and the online chemistry between the two stars, Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort. It was a risk: A love story between two kids with cancer, but it was a well-written script - adapted by Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber.
The exec said yes with a caveat: Keep a handle on the budget. This was a project that was pushed and pushed by producers Marty Bowen and Wyck Godfrey who nudged Fox executive Elizabeth Gabler into making the film. How did it happen? It didn’t hurt that the film was based on a bestselling book by John Green, but even still, that was far from a lock to getting it onto the big screen. This picture slogged through the monsters, the superheroes and the animated dragons of the summer to become one of the most profitable pictures in recent memory. If ever there was a perfect storm in releasing a film, this was it.
The modestly-budgeted The Fault In Our Stars (Fox has said it was $12M others said it was $16 but more like $14M after the tax incentive) will gross over $300M worldwide by week’s end for Fox.