It Ends With Us, a romance based on a bestseller, soars at the box office
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It Ends With Us stars Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni.
PHOTO: SONY PICTURES
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LOS ANGELES – American author Colleen Hoover’s book It Ends With Us has been a fixture on the bestseller list for years.
And now, the movie adaptation has become a smash at the box office. The US$25 million (S$33 million) film from Sony Pictures is on track to earn an estimated US$50 million in the United States and Canada, say box-office analysts.
Starring American actress Blake Lively, the romance is based on Hoover’s most popular book, which was initially released in 2016 but reappeared on the bestseller list in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2021. It has since spent some 140 weeks there.
Buoyed by TikTok, the book – about a complicated love triangle with undertones of domestic violence – has sold eight million copies and found fans worldwide.
The low-budget film comes at a time when there has been little in the marketplace geared to women, in contrast with mid-2023, when Barbie earned US$1.4 billion worldwide and became the highest-grossing film of the year.
Sony took advantage of this dearth in the marketplace with a potent social media campaign that featured Lively; guest appearances by her husband, Canadian actor Ryan Reynolds; and the help of her friend, American singer Taylor Swift, who contributed to the film and trailer the song My Tears Ricochet.
On Aug 9 alone, the PG13-rated film earned more than US$24 million as audiences tuned in to see Lively, 36, play a florist with a challenging past and who falls for a sexy, abusive neurosurgeon played by American actor Justin Baldoni, who also directed the film.
It took in another US$13.7 million on Aug 10 and is projected to earn about US$12 million on Aug 11. The film is slated to open in Singapore on Sept 5.
The performance of It Ends With Us is a welcome boost for the box office, which is still down some 16 per cent since 2023 at this time.
“Pure romance is not a big performer at the box office, but occasionally, the right story based on the right book comes along, and with a well-cast female lead, the movie catches fire,” said Mr David Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter on box-office numbers. “That’s happening here.”
Reviews have been middling. The New York Times called it “fitfully diverting, at times touching, often ridiculous and, at two hours and 10 minutes, almost offensively long”.
Yet audiences are giving it high marks. The Rotten Tomatoes audience score is hovering at 94 per cent positive and the exit score, as recorded by tracking service CinemaScore, is A minus.
The stellar box-office performance of It Ends With Us is a triumph for the Reynolds-Lively family, although it will just miss the No. 1 slot for the weekend with Reynolds’ hit, Deadpool & Wolverine,
The Marvel movie, also starring Australian actor Hugh Jackman, has now passed the US$1 billion mark in global ticket sales, with US$494.3 million in North America and US$535 million internationally, industry watcher Exhibitor Relations said.
Things were not as rosy for the Lionsgate adaptation of the video game Borderlands,
