Older actresses aren’t bankable? The blockbuster era for traditional comedies is over, with streaming having siphoned away the audience?
Meryl Streep, 76, stepped back into Miranda Priestly’s sky-high heels over the weekend and demolished those Hollywood orthodoxies.
“The Devil Wears Prada 2,” an old-fashioned workplace comedy, collected roughly $77 million at theaters in North America from Friday through Sunday, according to Comscore, a data service. It was the biggest domestic opening for a traditional comedy since 2015, when “Pitch Perfect 2” sold $69 million in tickets over its first three days, or roughly $97 million after adjusting for inflation.
Ms. Streep’s film, rated PG-13, took in an additional $157 million overseas, for a global total of about $234 million.
Women overwhelmingly powered the results; ticket buyers were 76 percent female, according to PostTrak, a film industry research service. Roughly 60 percent of the audience was 35 and older. (Hollywood typically considers a ticket buyer over age 34 to be “old.”)
For the weekend in North America, “The Devil Wears Prada 2” was No. 1. “Michael,” Lionsgate’s contentious Michael Jackson biopic, was a strong second in its second weekend in theaters. It sold about $54 million in tickets, for a new domestic total of $184 million and $424 million worldwide.
“The Devil Wears Prada 2” cost 20th Century Studios, which is owned by Disney, an estimated $100 million to make. Global marketing costs added at least another $80 million. Reviews were strong. The sequel reunited Ms. Streep with her castmates from the first film: Anne Hathaway and Emily Blunt, both 43, and Stanley Tucci, 65.
The first “Devil Wears Prada” was a smash hit in 2006, selling $327 million in tickets worldwide, or about $545 million in today’s money. It was one of six comedies to rank among the Top 20 box office performers of that year, alongside “Borat,” “Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby,” “Click,” “The Break Up” and “Failure to Launch.”
No traditional comedies cracked the Top 20 last year. (Or the year before that — or the year before that.) Some of the biggest hits in recent years had comedic elements, of course, including “The Minecraft Movie” and “Lilo & Stitch.” Those films, however, also relied on extensive visual effects, like partial animation.
“The Devil Wears Prada 2” was also a rare example of a movie anchored by an older actress. Women 60 and older accounted for just 2 percent of major female characters in wide-release movies last year, according to research by Martha Lauzen, who leads the Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University. (They included Aunt Gladys in “Weapons,” played by Amy Madigan, 75, who won an Oscar in March for her performance.)
Actresses of a certain age — even ones as celebrated as Ms. Streep, who has won three Academy Awards — are often sidelined by entrenched ageism and sexism at studios, which are overwhelmingly run by men, researchers say. Hits like “Book Club” (2018), which starred Diane Keaton and Jane Fonda, tend to be dismissed as anomalies.
But “The Devil Wears Prada 2” cannot be ignored. “This is a sensational opening,” said David A. Gross, a film consultant who publishes an influential Hollywood newsletter.
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