“Gods of Egypt” had to settle for a No. 2 bow on Friday, behind Fox’s smash-hit “Deadpool”, which piled on $8.95 million starting its third week of release for a cume of $263 million. The mythology epic only netted a mere $24.2 million overseas.
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Stacked against previous R-rated releases, only American Sniper and The Passion of the Christ have taken in more at the domestic box office and it will be interesting to see how close to Sniper’s $350.1 million Deadpool can get.
Lionsgate once hoped to turn “Gods of Egypt” into its next major film franchise.
Director Tim Miller’s Deadpool is fast approaching the $300 million mark domestically for Fox, star Ryan Reynolds and producer Simon Kinberg. Lionsgate CEO Jon Feltheimer has reassured analysts that the studio’s exposure on the budget was under $10 million.
At Gizmodo, Charlie Jane Anders captured the movie’s true despair, stating, “Gods of Egypt feels like such an abdication of story, and such a bastardization of culture, that the only sane response is to abandon sanity, and enlist in the murder-police of the senseless new era”. That wouldn’t actually be too bad… if it didn’t cost so much to make. But after controversy over its casting choices (placing white leads in ancient Egypt) the film arrived with sour buzz. The film nabbed an A CinemaScore. Either way, the $140 million budgeted feature, which is reportedly also carrying a $30 million marketing budget, isn’t likely to be making up that money at the domestic box office. It earned $6.1 million from 2,200 screens, while on 2,000 screens, Taron Egerton and Hugh Jackman edged the picture with $6.3 million for their inspiration sports movie, “Eddie The Eagle”.
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Triple 9 centers on crooked cops and criminals who plan a major heist, in the U.S. The cast includes Casey Affleck, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Anthony Mackie, Aaron Paul, Woody Harrelson, Kate Winslet, Teresa Palmer and Gal Gadot. Heading into the weekend it appeared Gods of Egypt could possibly falter enough for Triple 9 to pick up some steam over Saturday and Sunday if opening day audiences took to it. They didn’t.
