Updated Friday December 29 07:20
The Color Purple has now surpassed $25M at the box office. Whoopi Goldberg’s cameo performance as the midwife to the young Miss Celie marks a time in Hollywood filmmaking history of passing the torch. It has been 40 years since Goldberg portrayed Celie in Spielberg’s 1985 film adaptation of Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel. The story is based upon Walker’s true American experience of growing up poor in the south.
‘The Color Purple,’ a groundbreaking film that tells the inspiring story of a young African-American woman’s journey towards self-discovery and empowerment, has been making waves since its release on Christmas Day. Not only has it received critical acclaim and multiple accolades, but it has also captured the hearts of a significant and often overlooked audience – older black moviegoers.
This success serves as a testament to the importance and value of black American cinema, showcasing its ability to resonate with and connect with diverse audiences. In this article, we will explore the impact of ‘The Color Purple’ and its impressive box office performance, providing further evidence of the power and relevance of black storytelling in the film industry.
According to Deadline, The Color Purple now ties with the first Christmas day of Universal’s feature take on West End/Broadway musical Les Miserables which went on to ultimately make $148.8M. Diversity demos on the Oprah Winfrey-Steven Spielberg produced Color Purple were 65% Black, 19% Caucasian, 11% Hispanic and Latino and 2% Asian.
We def brought out the grandmas.
The Color Purple‘s largest demo being those over 55 at 25%; they also gave the Blitz Bazawule directed movie its best grades at 97%. Women over 25 turned out at 62% (94% grade), followed by guys over 25 at 21% (86%), women under 25 at 14% (91%) with guys under 25 a far distant at 4% (89%).
The film has outperformed expectations with $18 million from 3,152 North American theaters. It’s the largest Christmas Day opening for a film since 2009, and the second-biggest Christmas Day opening of all time (Variety). Boosted by positive reviews and a glowing “A” CinemaScore, “The Color Purple” marks the first musical in some time that’s resonated at the box office.
The film, backed by Warner Bros. and directed by Blitz Bazawule, collected more in a single day than recent stage-to-screen stories — including “West Side Story” ($10.5 million), “In the Heights” ($11 million), “Dear Evan Hansen” ($7.5 million) and “Cats” ($6.6 million) — earned in their opening weekends. Of course, “The Color Purple” benefitted by premiering on Christmas Day, one of the most popular days of the year for moviegoing. But this is a promising start for the $100 million-budgeted musical, which should benefit from word of mouth in the coming days.
