The Fault In Our Stars tops US charts on $48.2m

While The Fault In Our Stars owes a significant portion of its success to the presence of It Girl Shailene Woodley, who leads the cast alongside her Divergent co-star Ansel Elgort, a smart social media play contributed to the stunning debut.

The YA book’s author John Green may in fact be the biggest star of the equation. He enjoys a huge social footprint – commanding around 2.1m subscribers on his YouTube channel and 2.5m Twitter followers – and Fox 2000 did well to mobilise his fans.

According to studio data, around 80% of the film’s audience was female and the same portion was under 25 – right in the Millennial sweetspot that has made a bestseller of Green’s book about sweethearts who meet at a cancer support group.

The fact that half of the audience said they had not read the book speaks well to Fox 2000’s campaign. The film cost around $12m and at this rate is well on its way to the $100m mark. Josh Boone directed.

Disney’s Maleficent fell 52% in its second session, adding $33.5m for $127.4m and climbing to $335m worldwide.

Warner Bros’ sci-fi Edge Of Tomorrow starring Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt was a big hit internationally on $111m for the weekend but could not make the same impact in North America, where it arrived at number three on $29.1m despite excellent reviews.

Doug Liman directed the sci-fi action tale about an alien invasion and the production cost reportedly amounted to $178m. The film generated $4.2m from Imax.

Fox’s X-Men: Days Of Future Past has reached $189.1m and ranks fourth after three weekends. Godzilla in sixth place stands at $185m after four sessions.

In limited release Reliance Big opened the action title Holiday at number on $413,000 from 144 venues. Hipster distributor A24 released one of two Sundance selections that launched this weekend as Obvious Child arrived on $81,000 from three sites for a smashing $27,000 average.

Gravitas Ventures opened the other Park City premiere, Ping Pong Summer, on $31,900 from 17 sites.

Overall the top 12 fell around 5% compared to last weekend and gained approximately 6% against the same session in 2013.

Next weekend’s wide releases are Sony’s comedy sequel 22 Jump Street starring Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum; and DreamWorks Animation’s How To Train Your Dragon 2 through Fox.

Estimated Top 10 North America June 6-8 2014
Film (Dist) / Est wkd gross / Est total to date

1 (-) The Fault In Our Stars (Fox) Fox International $48.2m –

2 (1) Maleficent (Buena Vista) WDSMPI $33.5m $127.4m

3 (-) Edge Of Tomorrow (Warner Bros) WBPI $29.1m –

4 (2) X-Men: Days of Future Past (Fox-Marvel) Fox International $14.7m $189.1m

5 (3) A Million Ways To Die In The West (Universal) UPI $7.2m $30.1m

6 (4) Godzilla (Warner Bros-Legendary Pictures) WBPI $5.9m $185m

7 (6) Neighbors (Universal) UPI $5.2m $137.8m

8 (5) Blended (Warner Bros) WBPI $4.1m $36.5m

9 (9) Chef (Open Road) Aldamisa Entertainment $2.6m $10.4m

10 (8) Million Dollar Arm (Buena Vista) WDSMPI $1.8m $31.3m