Two movies get released this week, one from Francis Ford Coppola with Megalopolis starring Adam Driver, and the other, another animated movie with Wild Robot.
It’s still early in the weekend, but the Thursday preview numbers are pretty bad.
Megalopolis at a reported cost of $120 million or more brought in only $770K for its Thursday preview. Back in June, Kevin Costner’s similarly self-funded flick, Horizon, bombed with $800K in Thursday previews and a $11M opening.
The animated movie, Wild Robot, which follows Transformers One flopping last week, brought in only $1.95M, with a reported budget of $78M. Transformers One had a similar budget and a Thursday preview of $3.4 million and went on to only bring in $24.6M.
Friday night update: According to Deadline, Wild Robot is currently overperforming with a possible $35M opening, which would blow by Transformers One‘s opening. Wild Robot is said to have a $11.3M Friday compared to TO’s $9.5M, and kids are responding positively.
Megalopolis is also getting hammered by the critics on Rotten Tomatoes with a score of 50%.
And again similar to Transformers One, Wild Robot has a great Rotten Tomatoes Score of 98% but no one is watching. Perhaps similar to the latter, the marketing just wasn’t there. It seems Paramount fumbled the ball when they couldn’t decide whether to market Transformers One to kids or to longtime fans of the franchise. Is it a Toy Story movie or more in line with the cool and serious nature of the original? Can it be both?
From the outside looking in, Wild Robot also looks like Iron Giant which also bombed at the box office back in 1999. These type of animated movies look like they belong on streaming, which fans have become accustomed to watching, especially on Netflix. Same can be said for an indie flick like Megalopolis, I suppose.
Why is Megalopolis is bombing? I don’t think anyone has a clue what the movie is about. It also probably didn’t help that the trailer was yanked, that there was controversy about use of AI, and that Francis Ford Coppola being accused of kissing a girl on the cheek (or whatever). I am curious to see what word-of-mouth has to say from the fans, as the critics can’t be trusted, IMO, due to the controversy surrounding the film.
Update: Word-of-mouth isn’t looking too good.
It's a D+ for #Megalopolis Did you see this in theaters tonight? If so, share your thoughts in the comments! #cinemascore pic.twitter.com/w0vDlPy6Cu
— CinemaScore (@CinemaScore) September 28, 2024
