A female-led action sequel, a well-reviewed original genre flick and an adult-skewing political drama were no match for a kid-friendly IP cash-in.
Claire Foy in ‘The Girl in the Spider’s Web’ Sony
In a somewhat grim (but understandable) scenario, audiences rejected the three things we claim to want (an outright original and well-reviewed genre flick, a female-led action franchise offering and an adult-skewing character drama) in favor of a kid-targeted IP-revamp. I get it, but I don’t have to like it.
Paramount/Viacom Inc.’s Overlord earned around $10 million over the weekend. That’s a weak debut for a $38m-budgeted (not counting marketing) horror actioner with pretty strong reviews. The Bad Robot sci-fi horror flick, which is essentially Wolfenstein: The Movie with World War II soldiers encountering zombie Nazis alongside regular Nazis, was a tough sell both due to its lack of IP or franchise aspirations and due to confusion about whether or not it was connected to the Cloverfield franchise. It’s not, and frankly, it’s oddly refreshing to see a big movie like this that is just a stand-alone movie without any grander purpose. Like mother! and Annihilation, this is an artistic win but commercial miss for hard genre at Paramount.
Maybe they should have tacked Cloverfield to the title after all. The film was greenlit in the Brad Grey era, and its super-producer (J. J. Abrams) is currently shopping for a multimedia mega-deal elsewhere (probably Disney, Universal or Warner Bros.). The film played well at Fantastic Fest, but it’s beyond challenging to get folks to show up in theaters for a non-event movie these days. Not unlike Solo: A Star Wars Story, its biggest artistic strength (it’s just a movie) is its biggest commercial weakness (it’s just a movie). The film earned a B from Cinemascore, and director James Avery has already been hired to helm a new Flash Gordon movie for Fox.
Sony and MGM’s The Girl in the Spider’s Web is essentially the kind of action thriller that happens to feature an iconic female superhero that we all claim we want, and yet again we didn’t show up. The Fede Alverez movie is solid, “ground rule double” pulp, but the Lisbeth Salander brand/IP wasn’t remotely a draw for audiences who weren’t all that taken with David Fincher’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo back in 2011. That film used Christmas legs (and Oscar buzz) to parlay an $11m debut into a $103m domestic total. $242m worldwide isn’t bad for a 2.5-hour, R-rated serial killer thriller, but the Rooney Mara/Daniel Craig flick cost $90m to produce.
Sony’s new film, starring Claire Foy as the title character, cost just $43 million. The lower budget only matters if the movie opens well. This new film, more of a tech-thriller/conspiracy thriller than serial killer melodrama, earned just $8.015 million over the weekend. It will be lucky to clear $30m domestic ($25m seems more likely). The film earned a B from Cinemascore, and there is just so much ( Bohemian Rhapsody, A Star Is Born, etc.) for adult moviegoers right now. It didn’t help that this was based not on a Stiegg Larsson novel, but rather on a fourth installment authored by David Lagercrantz. I liked the movie, but this doesn’t surprise me.
Come what may, this is another case of a studio revamping or rebooting a dormant IP just because it was an existing IP without making a movie that appealed to folks without an interest in that IP. Yes, it’s a perfectly okay B movie that features a distinctly queer female superhero who occasionally goes all vigilante on men who hurt women, but it probably looked “wait for VOD” to most general moviegoers. This all goes to the overall problem, which is that folks no longer go to the movies just the go to the movies. A movie like this might have flourished 15-20 years ago as a casual moviegoing pick, but not today.
In platform news, Sony released Jason Reitman’s The Front Runner into theaters in New York and LA on Election Day. The film has failed to get much attention as an Oscar contender, thanks to (justifiably) mixed reviews and some more high-profile titles stealing all the media attention. It’s a good movie, but that’s not always enough. The political drama, starring Hugh Jackman as Gary Hart during the final three weeks of his doomed presidential campaign, will earn just $56,000 over the weekend in four theaters (for a $76k total). That’s a lousy $14k per-theater average, although the fires in Southern California probably didn’t help one bit. This one expands next week and then again on the 21st.
I’ve studied the film industry, both academically and informally, and with an emphasis in box office analysis, for 28 years. I have extensively written about all of said subjects for the last ten years. My outlets for film criticism, box office commentary, and film-skewing s…
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