"Divergent" is out in theaters this weekend and the film has a lot weighing on it.
It's the next big young adult movie adaptation to hit the big screen with Hollywood hopes of being the next money-making franchise.
The teen flick is expected to make north of $60 million opening weekend. Thursday night, the film opened to $4.9 million.
Despite that, Lionsgate’s stocktumbled about 6% Friday afternoon, but it really doesn’t make much sense.
Sure, it may not have received spectacular reviews, but neither did the "Twilight" series.
In reality, with $23 million so far at the box office, "Divergent" is already faring better than other young adult (YA) adaptations at theaters.
And while “Divergent” isn’t going to be a "Hunger Games" or "Harry Potter," it will certainly be a healthy franchise for Lionsgate and Summit Entertainment.
We took a look at the box-office numbers for the first film in every potential YA series. (It wouldn't be fair to compare any of the latter "Harry Potter" film sequels to the potential of a new franchise.)
From 2001's "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" to February's bomb "Vampire Academy," here are the box-office openings for 10 young adult movies brought to the big screen.
Note how "The Hunger Games" blows "Harry Potter" out of the water. Even if the film's opening weekend was adjusted for inflation, it would have made $133.2 million. "The Hunger Games" had a $152.5 million debut.
The YA releases above averaged a total box-office opening of $42 million. (Taking "Harry Potter" and "The Hunger Games" out of the equation they average $22.3 million.)
The worldwide box-office numbers don't get much better for any of the other films.
The majority —"I Am Number Four,""Beautiful Creatures,""The Host,""The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones,""Ender's Game," and "Vampire Academy"— all made under $100 million at theaters.
Yet, most of those same movies — "I Am Number Four,""Beautiful Creatures," and "The Mortal Instruments"— hovered around $60 million. The anticipated adaptation of "Ender's Game" set Lionsgate back $110 million.
"Divergent" is costing the studio an estimated $85 million making it one of the costliest YA's since "The Hunger Games."
Now, here are all of those charts combined into one.
What you'll want to focus on here is the difference between the film's budgets and worldwide totals.
After the wild success of "The Hunger Games" in 2012 there was a giant young adult movie boom; however, it's been difficult for another movie to duplicate that model at theaters.
Since "Harry Potter" is an obvious outlier having grossed $974.8 million worldwide, here's another look at the same chart.
In no way will "Divergent" be the next "Mortal Instruments" or "Beautiful Creatures" at the box office.
It's potential opening weekend of $60 million+ is a parallel to that of "Twilight" ($69.6 million) in 2008.
We all know the phenomenon that movie became.
