The audience that showed up for Masters of the Universe’s opening weekend was the one that grew up with He-Man, not the one Mattel hoped to mint. Deadline’s PostTrak exit breakdown puts moviegoers over 35 at 57 percent of the audience and the over-45 crowd, the generation raised on the 1980s Filmation series, at 36 percent. Kids under 12, the demographic a toy company most wants in the seats, were just 4 percent.
The gender split leaned just as hard one way: 68 percent male overall, with dads outnumbering moms 71 to 29 among parents, and boys under 12 making up 82 percent of the youngest ticket buyers against 18 percent for girls.
The marketing buy may help explain it. Per iSpot figures cited by Deadline, Amazon MGM outspent Scary Movie on linear television 12.3 million dollars to 2.8 million, running spots during the NBA, the Winter Olympics, SportsCenter and La Casa de los Famosos. Scary Movie, which opened to a franchise-record 55 million dollars the same weekend, leaned on a social and digital campaign instead and pulled the under-35 crowd at 75 percent.
There is a counterpoint in the same data. The few kids who did go loved it: under-12s scored the film at 96 percent in PostTrak’s top two boxes, with a 57 percent must-see-right-away. Deadline notes the open question for the film’s legs is whether those scores can pull families out in the coming weeks, after a 29.3 million dollar domestic start on a 170 million dollar production.
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