Love, Simon “pretty pleased” with box office returns

Box office returns have come in for the first gay teen romance to be released by a major Hollywood studio, and the results are good. Love, Simon, which follows 17-year-old Simon Spier has he comes out and finds his first love, opened in fifth place in the US. So far, its cumulative box office is $23 million, from a production budget of $17 million.

Major motion pictures must make around two to three times as much as their budget to break even – as theatres and distribution companies take their cut. While $23 million might not sound like much, it is a very promising start.

The film will be released in Australian cinemas this weekend, followed with a release in the UK and Ireland on April 6. It is expected the film will make back the rest of its production budget there, and then some.

“I would say 20th Century Fox would be pretty pleased with the US performance of Love, Simon,” Guardian box office columnist Charles Gant said. ‘It’s hard to talk in terms of comparisons, as which title would you compare it to? It’s hard to think of a mainstream US teen movie which puts an LGBT character so strongly at the heart of the story and makes his or her sexual orientation so focal to the plot.

“Perks Of Being A Wallflower featured a prominent LGBT character, played by Ezra Miller, but he wasn’t the protagonist. In the US, the widest point of distribution for that film was 745 cinemas. Love, Simon, which was released into 2,400 cinemas in North America, is getting a much more confident push from 20th Century Fox.

“As regards profitability, we have a long way to go. Cinemas keep half the box office, and Fox has to recoup its considerable marketing spend from what flows back. But foreign and all the ancillary home entertainment revenue is yet to come, so it’s nicely poised to be a profitable title.

“Some of the foreign markets look a bit questionable for Love, Simon, e.g. Russia and China, but it should perform in western Europe, Japan, Australia and possibly Latin America.”

LGBT+ representation, especially in films aimed at younger audiences, is incredibly important. If Love, Simon proves to be the success it is predicted to be, expect to see many more LGBT+ stories breaking through into the mainstream.

Tim Gibson - mygwork

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