'Mean Girls' takes 1st place at the box office. So fetch.
The musical rendition of the 2004 original took first place over the holiday weekend, after Paramount used TikTok to introduce young audiences to the cult classic.
The new PG-13 rated film grossed $28 million over the holiday weekend. Not accounting for inflation, that's more than the $24.4 million the first movie made in its opening weekend. (Paramount Pictures expects “Mean Girls” to reach $32 million once receipts from the federal holiday on Monday in observance of Martin Luther King’s Birthday are added.)
On Oct. 3, known to fans as “Mean Girls Day,” Paramount used TikTok as a platform to introduce young audiences to the cult classic, a staple of tween sleepovers, by sharing 23 10-minute clips for a one-day marketing stunt on the social media site.
From the comedic mind of Tina Fey, this is a new twist on the modern classic, ‘Mean Girls.’ New student Cady Heron (Angourie Rice) is welcomed into the top of the social food chain by the elite group of popular girls called "The Plastics," ruled by the conniving queen bee Regina George (Reneé Rapp) and her minions Gretchen (Bebe Wood) and Karen (Avantika). However, when Cady makes the major misstep of falling for Regina's ex-boyfriend Aaron Samuels (Christopher Briney), she finds herself prey in Regina's crosshairs. As Cady sets to take down the group's apex predator with the help of her outcast friends Janis (Auli'i Cravalho) and Damian (Jaquel Spivey), she must learn how to stay true to herself while navigating the most cutthroat jungle of all: high school.
“Musicals are on a roll,” said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore. “It seems like a lot of studios run away from putting musical on their films for fear of limiting their audience pool, but I think this is a genre Hollywood should embrace and highlight.”
“Mean Girls” is playing in theaters now, and will be available for licensing from Swank soon.