Paper Towns was released this weekend! Hooray! I’m so exited to see this movie, because Paper Towns is probably my favorite John Green book, though The Fault In Our Stars—last summer’s hit John Green book-to-movie—doesn’t fall very far behind on my favorites list. But as Paper Towns‘s opening weekend now draws to a close, how do the two movies’ opening weekends stack up against each other? And how do movie ticket sales correlate to book sales?
It probably goes without saying that John Green’s most recent book, The Fault In Our Stars, is also his most popular. A quick look at GoodReads.com shows that clearly: readers have rated the book an overwhelming 1.5 million times, giving it a 4.37 stars out of 5, and making it the 2012 GoodReads choice winner. It’s hard to stack up against those stats. By comparison, readers on GoodReads.com have rated Paper Towns an underwhelming (by comparison) 430,700 times, giving it a solid 4.0 stars out of 5. Now, ratings do not equal book sales, but I wasn’t able to find those stats while writing this.
Nevertheless, TFIOS is clearly a more popular book. As you might have guessed, that is (so far) translating to box office numbers. Both movies had a budget of $12 million. The Fault In Our Stars, on the one hand, made that amount back, plus three times that amount (so, $48 million) during its opening weekend in early June last year. Paper Towns, on the other hand, has just barely made that amount back during its opening weekend: $12.5 million, according to Box Office Mojo.
Unfortunately, I won’t be able to see it until after the second weekend, since I am leaving for GeekyCon in Orlando tomorrow and will likely be too busy for a movie until the convention is over. I hope to write about it as soon as I see it.
In the meantime, though, I’m watching the second trailer on repeat:
I can’t wait to see this movie! Have you seen it yet? If you have, STAY AWAY FROM THE COMMENT SECTION BELOW BECAUSE I WILL NOT HAVE YOU SPOILING THIS MOVIE FOR ME ON MY OWN WEBSITE.
THE END. GOODBYE.