--- title: John Green A Bigger Star Than Tom Cruise? Fault In Our Stars vs. Edge description: Bespectacled and borderline adorable, the 'Fault in Our Stars' author takes down Tom Terrific at the domestic box office and proves that avid readers can be turned into mass moviegoers. canonical: https://time.com/2848117/is-john-green-a-bigger-star-than-tom-cruise/ author: Richard Corliss article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-06-09T18:35:07.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-11T05:08:18.022Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: Is John Green a Bigger Star Than Tom Cruise? og:description: Bespectacled and borderline adorable, the 'Fault in Our Stars' author takes down Tom Terrific at the domestic box office and proves that avid readers can be turned into mass moviegoers. og:url: https://time.com/2848117/is-john-green-a-bigger-star-than-tom-cruise/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3fe4a8989ff1f89f/698696cbd0b6f2fdda304c6a/488845315.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: "The Fault In Our Stars" Nashville Red Carpet And Fan Event With Shailene Woodley, Ansel Elgort, Nat Wolff And John Green og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Is John Green a Bigger Star Than Tom Cruise? twitter:description: Bespectacled and borderline adorable, the 'Fault in Our Stars' author takes down Tom Terrific at the domestic box office and proves that avid readers can be turned into mass moviegoers. twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt3fe4a8989ff1f89f/698696cbd0b6f2fdda304c6a/488845315.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Is John Green a Bigger Star Than Tom Cruise? by [Richard Corliss](/author/richard-corliss/) ## Richard Corliss Jun 9, 2014 6:35 PM CUT  John Green, Nat Wolff, Shailene Woodley, and Ansel Elgort attend "The Fault In Our Stars" Nashville red carpet and fan event with Shailene Woodley, Ansel Elgort, Nat Wolff and John Green at Nashville War Memorial Auditorium on May 8, 2014 in Nashville, Tennessee. John Green, Nat Wolff, Shailene Woodley, and Ansel Elgort attend "The Fault In Our Stars" Nashville red carpet and fan event with Shailene Woodley, Ansel Elgort, Nat Wolff and John Green at Nashville War Memorial Auditorium on May 8, 2014 in Nashville, Tennessee.Rick Diamond—Getty Images by [Richard Corliss](/author/richard-corliss/) ## Richard Corliss Jun 9, 2014 6:35 PM CUT At the Manhattan premiere of the movie made from his novel _The Fault in Our Stars_, John Green seems to be the most star-struck fan. “I am sweating through my Burberry shirt,” [he reports on his immensely popular Vlogbrothers channel on YouTube](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXMJLoQGApg&list=UUGaVdbSav8xWuFWTadK6loA%20 "undefined"), “which is only increasing my already sizable anxiety.” Flanked by his brother Hank, Green gazes in wonder at the long line of _TFIOS_ [nerdfighters](http://starcasm.net/archives/274657 "undefined") waving “Okay” balloon posters (from the book), and says that meeting National Spelling Bee co-champ Ansun Sujoe is “unquestionably the highlight of my evening.” Back in his hotel room, he tells viewers, “I don’t get a percent of ticket sales or anything \[from the film version\]. And I don’t have to talk about it. And if I didn’t like it, _believe me_, you’d know. But in fact I _love_ the movie. I believe it’s amazingly faithful to the book, and powerful and funny and moving. … Soon, in fact very soon, everyone will get to see the movie.” He adds urgently, “Read the book first!” Pure hucksterism has rarely been this aw-shucks appealing. **(READ: Corliss’s** [**review of** **_The Fault in Our Stars_** **, the movie**](http://time.com/2822847/the-fault-in-our-stars-movie-review/%20 "undefined")**)** Or this successful. _TFIOS_, made for just $12 million, registered a buoyant $48.2 million this weekend at the North American box office. Finishing a solid No. 1, it soundly spanked Tom Cruise’s _Edge of Tomorrow_, the sci-fi thriller that cost 15 times as much to produce and earned nearly $20 million less at domestic theaters. How did a little movie about two kids fighting cancer and falling in love hit the heights? It helped that the female lead was Shailene Woodley, the 22-year-old who heads the new _Divergent_ franchise; _TFIOS_ is a YA novel too, though set in the realistic Indianapolis of today, not in postapocalyptic-fantasy Chicago. The movie’s distributor, Fox, smartly counter-programmed its teen weepie against every expensive action film and rowdy comedy of the early summer; this was the little engine that cried. Fox also eschewed traditional marketing — billboards and saturation advertising — by orchestrating a brilliant social-media campaign that, for a thrifty $20 million, got the word out early to the core audience: lovers of Green’s book. **(READ: Shailene**[ **Woodley’s TIME 100 tribute to John Green**](http://time.com/70799/john-green-2014-time-100/%20 "undefined")**)** The crucial element of that campaign was the author himself. Cruise may be one of the biggest marquee names of the past three decades, and still going strong at 51, but Green, 36, is a social-media star with the power to transform readers into moviegoers. His good looks help; he has the poised, bespectacled, dimpled, even-featured geniality of a small-town TV anchor headed for bigger markets. Or an Episcopalian rector who oozes sympathy for your sins (long ago he was enrolled at the University of Chicago Divinity School). Or, in his serious moments, the very young Tom Cruise — a passionate salesman of the higher emotions.  Actor Tom Cruise attends the 'Edge Of Tomorrow' red carpet premiere tour at Scotiabank Theatre on May 29, 2014 in Toronto, Canada. George Pimentel—WireImage/Getty Images **(READ: Lev Grossman’s** [**review of** **_The Fault in Our Stars_** **, the book**](http://time.com/2822847/the-fault-in-our-stars-movie-review/%20 "undefined")**)** Though the industry site _The Wrap_ claimed a [“whopping edge on social media” for _TFIOS_](http://www.thewrap.com/the-fault-in-our-stars-whopping-social-media-edge-by-the-numbers/ "undefined"), Cruise actually has two million more Twitter followers than Green (4.57 million to 2.48 million) and nearly five times as many Facebook “likes” (7.2 million to 1.55 million). But we’d guess that most of the Cruise crew is in foreign countries, where his films often earn about twice their domestic revenue, while the Green team is primarily homegrown. The temperature of the ardor also matters. Cruise’s “likes” are Green’s “loves”; the author had energized his base to see _The Fault in Our Stars_. For Cruise, _Edge of Tomorrow_ is just another big scrimmage (though among the best and smartest of his recent films). For Green, this was his Super Bowl. **(READ: Corliss’s** [**review of** **_Edge of Tomorrow_**](http://time.com/2822587/edge-of-tomorrow-movie-review/ "undefined")**)** And he won — the weekend, anyway, at North American theaters — by running up the score early. _TFIOS_ racked up $8.2 million at Thursday evening showings, including a $25-a-ticket special that provided moviegoers with a satellite link to Green and his stars. The film took in another $17.9 million Fri., then dropped to $12.6 million Sat., when it finished second to Angelina Jolie’s Disney live-action fantasy _Maleficent_ but still above _Edge of Tomorrow_. The estimated gross for Sun. was $9.5 million, giving _TFIOS_ [the most front-loaded weekend haul of any movie to earn at least $20 million](http://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/days/percofwknd.htm?page=Fri&p=.htm%20 "undefined"). **(READ: Our** [**Saturday box office report for** **_The Fault in Our Stars_**](http://time.com/2841342/fault-our-stars-box-office/%20 "undefined")**)** So Green got the faithful to the movie; it’s just that a sizable majority went early, and the fervor didn’t quite spread to the wider audience that was either ignorant of the book or reluctant to see a cancer romancer. The _TFIOS_ attendees were 82% female and 80% under the age of 25 — both astonishingly lopsided statistics. By comparison, _Edge of Tomorrow_ attracted customers who were 61% male and 72% _over_ 25\. Young women for one, older guys for the other: you have to wonder if anyone in America saw both movies this weekend. **(READ: Our**[ **Sunday box office report for** **_The Fault in Our Stars_**](http://time.com/2845147/fault-in-our-stars-john-green-edge-of-tomorrow/%20 "undefined")**)** Can _The Fault in Our Stars_ duplicate its domestic clout abroad? Eleven million copies of the book are in print worldwide, so the movie has a shot. But international audiences usually resist Hollywood weepies, like [_The Vow_](http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=vow.htm "undefined") and the many adaptations of Nicholas Sparks novels ([_The Notebook_](http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=notebook.htm "undefined"), [_Dear John_](http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=dearjohn.htm "undefined"), [_The Lucky One_](http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=luckyone.htm "undefined"), [_Safe Haven_](http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=safehaven.htm "undefined")). The guy they love: Tom Cruise. _Edge of Tomorrow_ has already earned $111 million abroad, including $25 million — nearly the movie’s total North American revenue — in three days in China. So John Green must take on a new mission if he is to expand on his faultless _Stars_ opening when _Paper Towns_, another movie of one of his books, opens next year. 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