So how well do we think Divergent will do when it premieres at the end of the month? This week Bekah and I were chatting and our business conversation turned to Divergent, cause who’s business conversations don’t? Don’t front President Obama, we know your meetings turn to the important matters of stuff like Divergent and Theo James and the hairline of Sam Heughan.
So between the spreadsheets and the payroll decisions we decided to get REAL scientific and figure out the most perplexing question of all: How well is Divergent going to do at the box office???? HIT IT
So we got about as scientific as two bloggers with an internet connection and access to the USA Today Best Sellers List (but only since 2007) can get and this is what we found out…
As of THIS week Divergent has been on the Best Sellers list for 104 weeks and it’s follow ups made it some of the best selling books of 2013 according to USA Today. “The three books by Roth, now all of 25, are Nos. 2, 8 and 15 among the 100 top sellers of 2013. And that’s before the film adaptation of Divergent hits theaters in March.” So let’s take a look at some similar YA novels and where they fell on the Best Sellers list in the weeks leading up to their movie adaptation premiere
Twilight
As of it’s movie premiere on November 21, 2008 (will we ever forget that date? NO!) Twilight had been on the best sellers list 116 weeks and was currently number one with the entire saga following it at numbers two through four! We got this number by doing a little fancy math (addition, division) assuming that Twilight was on the list since it’s debut in 2006.
Twilight’s first week box office gross: 69 Million
Hunger Games
Now here’s were the math starts to change a bit because where as both Divergent and Twilight were only out in print about two years because their movie adaptations, Hunger Games was out and on the best sellers list for almost four and a half years. Besides it being a great story you’ll see the definite correlation between the time between the book release and the first week box office gross.
Hunger Games had been on the best sellers list for 235 weeks when the movie was released and was currently number one.
Hunger Games’s first week box office gross: 152 Million, nearly double the first week of Twilight.
The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones
Ok, so here’s where it’s going to get a bit murky, while Cassandra Clare’s Mortal Instruments series is super popular, we’re not dealing with the same wild success of the above book to movie adaptations. City of Bones was published March 27, 2007 yet didn’t enter the best sellers list till over two years later on April 2, 2009. As of it’s movie release date on August 21, 2o13 City of Bones was number five on the best sellers list but has only spent 88 weeks on the list since it’s publication.
The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones first week box office gross: 9 Million
Beautiful Creatures
Again, I think we can see a correlation here when we look at Kami Garcia and Margie Stohl’s Beautiful Creatures book to movie adaptation. Beautiful Creatures was published on December 1, 2009 yet debuted on the best sellers list only four weeks before the movie version premiered on February 14, 2013. Beautiful Creates listed at number 6 the week of it’s premiere. It’s currently been on the best sellers list for 23 weeks.
Beautiful Creatures first week box office gross: 7.5 Million
Let’s Do Some Fancy Math!
Sooooo considering Divergent’s popularity based solely on it’s continuous ranking on the best sellers list since it’s publication and assuming that Divergent will stay on the list and hopefully move up ONE spot to number one when the movie premiere, we can safely place it in the same arena as Hunger Games and Twilight where those films made roughly $50-60,000.00 per week it listed. Given that shady and totally not scientific math I’ve come up with this prediction:
Divergent’s First Week Box Office Gross:
107 Weeks on Best Seller List x .50 = 53.5 Million
I rounded down on the money per week ratio just because we’re totally guessing but hey, we will either be shocked and amazed at this math in three weeks or laughing and reminding everyone how we came up with this hair brained idea that we could predict box offices based on the best sellers lists.
And for the hell of it, why don’t we predict the opening week box office for Fifty Shades of Grey! I know you were all thinking it… I know it’s not YA but it’s fan fic based on a YA novel, so why not?
Fifty Shades was “published” in April of 2012 by Vintage books, for the purposes of this math equation we’ll use an approximation of this publishing date and not the date of the Fan Fic publication or the self-publication dates in 2011. Assuming that Fifty will stay on the list till it’s movie release date next February 15, 2015 here’s the math:
157 Weeks on Best Seller List x .50 = 78.5 Million
Prepare to jump off the highest bridge in your city the week this premieres.
So, clearly this is just funny math put together by some girls who were “busy” at work. We knows there’s a lot more that goes into a movie’s success like, maybe the movie actually being GOOD, how closely they stick to the story line, how well it’s marketed and if the book fan base gets behind the film. Also with Divergent we have the somewhat unpopular ending in Allegiant to contend with BUUUTTT who’s to say we can’t do a little Divergent box office predictions with our little formula? If only it were so easy as the weeks on the best seller list to opening weekend ratio, we’d be RICH!
Who’s going to see Divergent opening weekend March 21, 2014? Will we see you there?
