Paper Towns, the new John Green screen adaptation, took full advantage of its author’s star power Thursday night. The young adult dramedy snuck past Adam Sandler and Sony’s critically drubbed Pixels.
While there’s a chance that neither film will win the box office this weekend with both Ant-Man and Trainwreck still drawing audiences, this is certainly good news for Paper Towns. The Fox movie is banking more on Green pulling in fans than the film’s stars and that’s working so far.
According to estimates, Paper Towns, which stars model Cara Delevingne and The Fault In Our Stars’ Nat Wolff, grossed $2 million from Thursday night showings alone. That should put the film on track for a $20 million debut, notes TheWrap.
Fault, which was also a Green adaptation, started off with $48 million last year. That book was also much more popular when the movie went out, so Paper Towns will be an interesting test to see if Green fans will come out for his other books.
Pixels came in with $1.5 million and will probably scoot past Paper Towns with just over $20 million by the end of the weekend. The Hollywood Reporter notes that the movie cost $90 million to make though and could hand Sandler another flop. The movie has been hit hard by critics, with just a 20 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Southpaw, which stars Jake Gyllenhaal as a boxer and was directed by Antoine Fuqua, made $1.2 million on Thursday. It will probably hit around $15 million this weekend.
All three films have to deal with Ant-Man and Trainwreck, which had strong debuts last week.
image by Michael Tackett/20th Century Fox