Shares of Viacom (VIAB) were down in mid-morning trading on Monday as the media giant’s big-budget “Ben-Hur” film slumped at the box office this weekend.
Advertisement
That makes it one of the season’s more pricy flops, albeit one that never had anything like the ambition of 1959’s Charlton Heston epic. Overseas, the epic rolled out in about 33% of the marketplace, grossing $10.7-M for a global box office open of $22-M. “They went big and they went home”.
The latest “Ben-Hur” film received a low score of 28 percent by Rotten Tomatoes. The studio has had a string of poor performing projects (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, Zoolander 2) and involved in corporate drama between CEO Philippe Dauman against the Redstone family, the media conglomerate’s controlling stakeholders. The official description for the film, reads like this: ” Judah Ben-Hur, a prince falsely accused of treason by his adopted brother Messala, an officer in the Roman army. The studios also hoped that producers Mark Burnett and Roma Downey, who earned devout points with “Son of God” and the mini-series “The Bible”, would help them turn out values audiences.
So an 11th-hour push to the faith-based demo didn’t save “Ben-Hur”, but the bigger issue is the disinterest in the sword-and-sandal story to begin with. It also did well in the South and Southwest, areas that are more religious, but did not do as well in more secular regions of the country such as the Northeast and the West Coast.
When a group of young people decide to rob a blind man, they are thrown into a fight for survival against the seemingly super powered man in the horror film Don’t Breathe. “There are 52 million Americans in the values audience – one in every three moviegoers – more than enough audience alone to propel a film like Ben-Hur to box office success”.
“It goes to a general trend”, he said. We want to hear your thoughts. Paramount was expecting domestic weekend sales of about $20 million, while estimates from forecasters such as Hollywood Stock Exchange and BoxOfficePro.com ranged as high as $13 million.
Remake of “Ben-Hur” failed to make the box-office in its opening weekend, while “Suicide Squad” continue to reign its first position for third consecutive week.
The supervillain movie “Suicide Squad” held the top spot at theaters for the third straight week with an estimated $20.7 million over its third weekend. When you add in the worldwide gross, the film has made nearly $573 million, which is pretty good for a film that has taken the hits from critics like Suicide Squad has.
Once again the Warner Bros. Comparing it to Batman v Superman, that movie dropped 54.5% in its third weekend for a $23.3 million third weekend for a $296 total.
Advertisement
Miles Teller, Jonah Hill, Bradley Cooper and Kevin Pollack star in this war/comedy based on actual events.
