Taylor Kitsch & Rihanna star in 'Battleship'
*(Via The Hollywood Reporter) – Universal and Hasbro Entertainment’s big-budget Battleship barely left port in its North American launch, grossing a dismal $25.3 million.
That’s well below the anticipated $35 million to $40 million that Universal and director Peter Berg were hoping for. Battleship, designed to put the studio squarely in the tentpole game, cost at least $209 million to produce, excluding a pricey marketing spend.
Battleship’s international gross of $226.8 million provides some cushion, but it needed a strong domestic performance to end up in the black. A $25.3 million opening means the movie might not clear $70 million or $80 over the long haul domestically, resulting in a notable loss for Universal and sparking plenty of Monday-morning quarterbacking within the studio about what went wrong.
There’s already speculation that Battleship, starring Taylor Kitsch, Rihanna, Brooklyn Decker and Liam Neeson, will follow the same course as Disney’s John Carter, which debuted to $30.2 million in March and topped out at $71.8 million domestically. Overseas, John Carter, also starring Kitsch, earned $200.6 million. The pic resulted in a $200 million loss for Disney.
Read/learn more at The Hollywood Reporter.
Domestic box office, May 18-20
Title/Weeks in release/Theater count, Studio/Three-day weekend total/Cume
1. The Avengers, 3/4,249, Disney/Marvel Studios, $55.1 million, $457.1
2. Battleship, 1/3,690, Universal/Hasbro, $25.3 million.
3. The Dictator, 1/3,008, Paramount, $17.4 million, $24.5 million.
4. Dark Shadows, 2/3,755, Warner Bros., $12.8 million, $50.9 million.
5. What to Expect When You’re Expecting, 1/3,021, $10.5 million.
6. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, 3/354, Fox Searchlight, $3.3 million, $8.2 million.
7. The Hunger Games, 9/2,064, Lionsgate, $3 million, $391.6 million.
8. Think Like a Man, 5/1,722, Sony, $2.7 million, $85.9 million.
9. The Lucky One, 5/2,839, Warner Bros., $1.8 million, $56.9 million.
10. The Pirates! Band of Misfits, 4/1,840, Sony/Aardman, $1.5 million, $25.4 million.
Seriously people?!!!
There is a lot to choose from in the movies right now and so, it got spread around.
MIB3 comes out this week on top of all of that!
So guess what? It’s gonna take longer to make your money. If you were smart, and paid attention to what you flat out saw was coming, you’d have spread out your marketing spend and planning to make back your money and to gather you profit between opening day and the end of June. Studios kill me with this modern day wanting to make money back within the first two weeks. I’m old enough to remember when movies used to stay in the movie houses for months. I also remember the secondary movie houses where you used to pay $2,00 to see a movie that came out like six months ago or more. This instant gratification, not working for your profit, give as close to nothing as possible to get attitude that has become prevelant in our modern society is on my very last nerve. That model cannot be sustained and is causing a lot of people to loose jobs unnecessarily due to unrealistic expectations.
The movie wasn’t that good, in my opinion. I don’t look for great acting in an action film so my expectations were very low in that area. Well, they manage to make me say wow that is bad. There are several instances in the movie where they wanted to have that catch phrase moment like Bruce Willis but it was just lame. The dialog seemed forced however, the special effects were top notch.
I would say if you want to zone out for an hour or two, this is the movie to watch. By the way, they never say “You sank my Battleship!”