Following the so-called #Barbenheimer phenomenon, the only big-deal domestic hits in the last five months of 2023 were female-driven or female-skewing films. Too bad Hollywood is still betting on male-dominated superhero I.P.
It may or may not be surprising that Mean Girls, the new film based on the 2004 Tina Fey-written coming-of-age comedy and subsequent Fey-written musical, is on track to gross $32 million over the long M.L.K. Day weekend. Mean Girls is just the latest example (see also: Smile and Evil Dead Rise) of a film intended for streaming that was instead deployed to theaters to seek fortune and glory. It’s also the latest example of a theatrical success story powered by women and girls. The film follows the $1.4 billion global success of Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and those AMC-distributed concert films from Taylor Swift and Beyoncé, which gave strike-impacted theaters a shot in the arm late last year in between #Barbenheimer in mid-July and the year-end holiday frame, which offered up hits big (Wonka) and small (Anyone But You).
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