As Disney flicks continue to flop, with audiences finally waking up to the wokeness in the movies and realizing just how bad the plots and writing of most modern films are, other studios are suffering as well. Among those looking like it is headed for the rocky shoals of audience boredom is Warner Bros. Discovery, with the new “Aquaman” film projected to have a brutally bad opening weekend.
As background, the new movie is Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom and it is a sequel to 2018’s Aquaman. The first film in the series received a mixed reception from audiences, with some loving it and others finding it absolutely horrible.
But, despite the mixed reviews, Aquaman was an astounding financial success, particularly for the generally modest film lineup at the time, managing to be a surprise blockbuster that brought in a whopping $335 million domestically and $1.15 billion globally when it came out in late December of 2018.
The new one is not projected to have such luck. Rather, according to industry watcher Box Office Pro, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is projected to bring in only $32 million to $42 million in its opening weekend and just $105 million to $168 million total in domestic theaters.
That is compared against the massive budget for the movie, which was reportedly $205 million before it had to undergo numerous rounds of test screenings, re-edits, and re-shoots, which drove the cost up, and before promotion costs that could have brought the total cost up to over $300 million. With theaters keeping half of ticket sales, it would have to make over $600 million to break even…meaning it’s projected box office haul is brutally bad.
Commenting on what might be going on in the industry that is leading to such a poor project performance from the movie, which had such a large budget and cost overruns, Box Office Pro noted, “The general audience appetite for comic book movies has evolved and narrowed substantially in the five years since the first Aquaman came out. DC films have seen a particularly sharp decline with under-performances by Shazam! Fury of the Gods and Blue Beetle this year.”
Box Office Pro continued, adding, “Early pre-sales are pacing 25 percent ahead of the aforementioned Shazam! sequel and 62 percent behind Black Adam after one day of sample market tracking. The holiday release pattern could skew one-to-one comparisons in certain models.”
Another issue for the movie, outside of the superhero movie market being well past oversaturated, is that it stars Amber Heard and many are furious with Heard over her false, career-wrecking allegations about her former husband, Johnny Depp.
Making the problem of a bad box office yet worse is that another Warner Bros film, The Flash, was released over the summer and was a massive flop. The studio spent about $400 million making and promoting the film, but it then brought in only about $268 million at the box office, so it was a long way off from making a profit, particularly after the movie theaters kept their cut.
Featured image credit: By Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America – Jason Momoa, Amber Heard, Nicole Kidman, Patrick Wilson, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II & James Wan, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=71245632
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