*Yes, we know, it isn’t technically a musical, but go with us on this one…
As of Friday 2 November, A Star Is Born has made €4,526,493 in Ireland alone.
Usually, the UK & ROI box office numbers are lumped in together, but that Ireland-only figure represents 18.8% of the UK & ROI total, despite Ireland having less than 7.5% of the UK’s population.
It is closing in on the Top Ten biggest box office hits of all-time in Ireland, with No.10 right now being The Dark Knight Rises back in 2012 with €5,499,254. (The top spot – Avatar in 2009 with €8,702,770 – is safe. Probably.)
At the time of writing (Sunday 4 November), the official soundtrack to A Star Is Born is Number One in the Irish Album Charts, and ‘Shallow’ by Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper is Number One in the Irish Single Charts.
Perusing that same chart, you’ll find fellow A Star Is Born tracks ‘Always Remember Us This Way’ at No.3, and ‘I’ll Never Love Again’ at No.10.
It is fair to say that A Star Is Born is a huge success here, but anyone thinking this is an anomaly, we’ve got some news for you…
While ASIB is no longer topping the Irish cinema chart, it is at No.2, with the top spot going to… another music-based movie, Bohemian Rhapsody.
That movies soundtrack is currently at No.5 in the Official Irish Album Charts, just one spot below the official soundtrack to The Greatest Showman. Yep, the movie that was released on 26 December 2017, and was still in the Irish Box Office Charts well into May 2018.
This summer, Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again stormed to €5.4 million, and it may have cracked the top ten all-time list once the final tallies have been counted. At the time of writing, that movie’s soundtrack is No.12 in the album charts.
Are you seeing a trend yet?
If Irish audiences can sing along with it, then they will make it a hit. And not just any hit, but a hit that is disproportionate in size to other cinema-going audiences.
Beauty & The Beast was the same back in March 2017, ditto for La La Land in the January before that, all the way back to Moulin Rouge in 2001 (if we’re attempting to keep things relatively modern).
The point is, the average cinema goer seems to claim that they don’t have time for musicals, and while some of these movies are musicals in the way that many people would immediately box them into being, there is clearly a huge appetite for any movie that allows the audience to learn the soundtrack to.
A Star Is Born has tapped into that, and while becoming something of a success in the worldwide box office, most likely going on to win a handful of Oscars, we just have to look at the worldwide numbers.
$264 million in cinemas around the world, and counting. Accounting for exchange rates, Ireland’s €4.5 million accounts for a little under 2% of the worldwide taking. That doesn’t sound like a lot, until you realise Ireland accounts for less than 0.07% of the world’s population.
Math and science have proven we love musicals. There is no point in fighting it anymore.
Bring on Mary Poppins Returns this December!
LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ with Aideen McQueen – Faith healers, Coolock craic and Gigging as Gaeilge
