The Martian Movie Takes Off With $50 Million in Box Office

While “The Martian” is a simple story, it’s one that makes you glad movies exist.

Readers of Andy Weir’s novel (on which the film is based) will no doubt attest to the way in which Scott brilliantly captures Watney’s snarky demeanour and dry wit.

The entire film follows Watney in his attempt to survive each day with an eye to how he can be rescued in the future.

As The Wall Street Journal put it, “The Martian” is a mix of “Apollo 13” and “Castaway”. Could it happen? What do you mean there are no explosions in space?

Even from its earliest trailers, The Martian’s tone is noticeably lighter than that of its space film counterparts ie. “Gravity” had the benefit of several Imax locations, which were being held exclusively for Sony’s “The Walk”, depriving “The Martian” of a few healthy surcharges. The film’s star would spend his time farming potatoes harvested from his co-astronaut’s feces. This movie stands out from the crowd in so many ways and is an enjoyable ride the whole way through.

When he read about the water discovery, Weir sent a note to Green worrying if the movie was suddenly obsolete, since Watney could now potentially find water instead of creating it through an inventive chemical process. Also, the disaster at the start could have been more original (we’ve seen the exact same scene in other science fiction movies). How would things play out for our astronaut? Twentieth Century Fox backed the $108 million production and pushed the film out to 3,831 theaters.

“The Martian” is a book-to-film adaptation that has been one of the first to be described as better than the book. And the rest of the cast aren’t exactly slouches either; Jessica Chastain, Donald Glover, Sebastian Stan, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Kate Mara, Aksel Hennie, Kristen Wiig, Benedict Wong, Mackenzie Davis, Sean Bean, and Michael Peña all seize their moments to shine.

The movie was on track to sell 55 million USA dollars in tickets in the United States and Canada this weekend, according to studio estimates gathered by industry analysts at Rentrak.

How do you measure the success of a film like this?