We all know that successful action movies with female leads are flukes in the trend of them being “risky,” while failed action movies with male leads are sure things and all the ones that don’t score at the box office are flukes. Well, it’s looking like we’re going to have two flukes in a row! What are the odds.
Last year was an excellent year for pointing out the false assumption that lady-led action film is at a disadvantage, with The Hunger Games, Snow White and the Huntsman, Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2, Prometheus and Brave out grossing 2012’s installments of the Bourne, Expendables, and Ghost Rider franchises. But we’re getting a late resurgence this year with Gravity and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, with the former having just made it past the $400 million mark in worldwide grosses this weekend.
This makes Gravity the best grossing live-action October release in history (without adjusting for inflation), beating out the last record holder, Taken 2. If it can take in another $150 million before it leaves theaters, it might even grab the top spot from Puss in Boots. In its fifth weekend in American theaters, it’s still only fifth in the box office.
Catching Fire hasn’t even been released yet, and analysts are predicting that it will definitely outdo its predecessor, the first film since Avatar to take the first place spot on the weekend box office four weekend in a row. Folks out there in the business are claiming that it’ll pull anywhere from $140 to $160 million in its first weekend alone, breaking Twilight: New Moon‘s November release record.
(via Digital Spy and The Hollywood Reporter.)
