Box Office -'It Ends With Us' Nabs a $24 Million Friday And Affirms Blake Lively's Status As A Butts-in-Seats Movie Star

Shocker! Women and girls will show up for big female-focused movies that aren't just superhero movies, Disney remakes or male-focused genre films with extra romance.

News flash #1: Women go to the movies.  

News flash #2: Women still like to go to movies that are for/from/about women that aren't just conventionally male-focused genres (like action movies or superhero flicks) that happen to have a female lead or a romantic subplot.  

News flash #3: Yes, Blake Lively is a "butts in sears" movie star.  

This Ends with Us, the adaptation of Colleen Hoover's bestselling novel, earned $24 million on Friday, including $7 million in Thursday previews. That's above the $13-$17 million debuts of Lively's previous "not a franchise-friendly action/fantasy flick" vehicles (The Age of Adaline in 2015, The Shallows in 2016 and A Simple Favor in 2018) for their entire Fri-Sun weekend. So obviously, the book's popularity helped but recall that Tom Cruise's first $16 million-plus debut was for the adaptation of John Grisham's incredibly popular The Firm, which earned $25 million over the Fri-Sun part of a $32 million Wed-Sun debut in July 1993.

The only question for tomorrow is whether it ends up closer to $50 million or $60 million for the weekend. Conventional wisdom suggests fan-driven frontloading for a Fri-Sun debut of around $50 million (on par, sans inflation, with the $48 million debut of 20th Century Fox’s (terrific) The Fault in our Stars in June of 2014) but we'll see.  At the very least, with an A- from CinemaScore, it's clear that regular audiences don't care (or aren't negatively affected by) speculative online chatter about whether director (and co-star) Justin Baldini saw eye-to-eye with Blake Lively during production.

There's also online handwringing about Lively using the promotional tour to do the conventional movie star thing (plugging herself and her outside ventures) while the comparatively less ever-present Baldoni discussed the movie and its domestic abuse-specific themes. Ditto folks online who apparently did zero research, including not watching Sony's very "upfront about what the movie is about" theatrical trailer and feigning outrage at just now learning that the film isn't just a glossy wealth porn romance. General audiences knew what they were going to see or didn't mind what the movie becomes. They liked what they got either way.