‘Woman King’ Box Office: The Secret Behind Its Success (and Why You Shouldn’t Rule Out a Sequel) - Hollywood Reporter

TriStar's Nicole Brown, who guided the movie, says the film “can be a door opener for more Black stories to be told.".

That wasn’t so in the case of The Woman King, a Black female-led epic action-adventure that opened to a better-than-expected $19.1 million over the Sept.

It’s a win for Hollywood,” TriStar president Nicole Brown, who guided the movie, told The Hollywood Reporter in a Sept.

Just as Black Panther, Girls Trip and Crazy Rich Asians, among films, were defining moments for diversity, so is Woman King.

“Like I said at #TIFF.Net, if you don’t plop down money on opening weekend, you’re not going to see … Black females leading a movie AGAIN.

The promising opening was thanks to older females — and particularly older Black females — a demo that has been the most reluctant to return to theaters amid the pandemic.

Females made up 58 percent of Woman King’s audience, while Black moviegoers vastly over-indexed in accounting for 56 percent of ticket buyers, followed by Caucasians (23 percent), Latinos (15 percent), Asians (3 percents) and Other (6 percent), according to PostTrak.

So I’m proud and excited that Woman King can be a door opener for more black stories to be told.

Audiences love Woman King as much as critics.

And word-of-mouth will further buoyed should Woman King land top Oscar nominations.

Brown — the first Black woman to lead a live-action studio label — made Woman King a priority when Sony Pictures chairman Tom Rothman tapped her to run TriStar

When Brown told Greenstein — a marketing and distribution veteran — that she wanted to make the female Black equivalent of Gladiator, he told her to go for it (when previously pitching the film to STX, producer Cathy Schulman was offered a $5 million budget)

Greenstein said it’s no small feat to sell a period adventure that isn’t based on existing IP or a book, “The opening shows both the strength of Black moviegoers, the core audience, and moviegoers in general

The ideal scenario would be for Woman King, which also stars Thuso Mbedu, Lashana Lynch, Sheila Atim, Hero Fiennes Tiffin and John Boyega, to clear as much as $80 million domestically