One of the season’s most broadly-debated films is on track to do pretty well, box-office wise. Right now, Ghostbusters is being estimated to earn between $ 40 and $ 50 million dollars in North America, and as far as prerelease audience appeal is concerned, appears to be doing best with “females over the age of 25”, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Given that the studio has three weeks left before the official release date, however, they’ll likely continue to try to drum up broader interest with different audiences and age ranges–the old and new cast appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live was no doubt designed to pull in that in-demand male audience, as well as the promos for the film that aired during the NBA Finals.

I definitely can’t fault the studio for trying to pull in more and more people to see this movie, but I question whether they’d be going to such great lengths to draw a female audience in to see a male-dominated film. Probably not; we already know that the vast majority of “frequent moviegoers” aren’t white dudes, according to the study released by the MPAA a couple years ago, and women are most likely going to show up for Ghostbusters. (Several friends I spoke to offline about this movie said they were probably even going to go more than once.)

As far as the Ghostbusters haters are concerned, however, Sony chairman Tom Rothman isn’t worried in the slightest. In fact, he welcomes the national attention the debate over the film has garnered: “It’s the greatest thing that ever happened. Are you kidding me? We’re in the national debate, thank you. Can we please get some more haters to say stupid things?”

If Ghostbusters does as well as predicted, it’ll actually be Paul Feig’s best opening of a film since 2013’s The Heat, which clocked in at $ 39.1 million. Surprisingly, given Bridesmaids‘ popularity back in 2001, it only debuted at $ 26.2 million domestically–but we all know how things worked out for that film eventually.

(via The Hollywood Reporter)

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