It’s such an easy target; bad effects, awful story, whitewashing, atrocious acting, and poor directing and you’re just scratching the surface of what’s wrong with it. In fact, I thought this would be so bad that it would actually do decent numbers at the weekend box office, but “decent” is a matter of perspective.
Advertisement
With a $140 million price tag, plus at least a $30 million promo budget, Gods of Egypt is going to have to, well, pray to the gods that a massive worldwide haul can rescue it from becoming the biggest box office flop of 2016 thus far.
Lionsgate’s Gods of Egypt, featuring Gerard Butler as a rebellious Egyptian god, debuted in second place with $19 million in the US.
With another $31.5 million, the foul-mouthed ‘Deadpool’ now sits with a domestic total of $285.6 million.
Although the margin of victory is getting smaller each week, the film still isn’t breaking a sweat. Directed by actor-turned-film-maker Dexter Fletcher, it has been well-reviewed by critics and boasts a 73% “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The drama earned $6.3M and opened this weekend at 2,042 locations.
DreamWorks Animation’s “Kung Fu Panda 3”, distributed by Fox, landed in third place with $9 million in ticket sales and $128.5 million to date in domestic ticket sales, according to comScore. Elsewhere for Fox, Oscar best-picture frontrunner The Revenant grossed $3.8 million to clear the $170 million mark in North America. It was made for US$23 million. Off 41%, Risen has earned $22.7 million after ten days.
Triple 9 was a disappointment, opening at #6 with $6.1 million. Reviews for the Hugh Jackman flick were positive and word of mouth has been strong (the CinemaScore is a glowing A) so its drops may not be too big in the weeks ahead.
Comedy How to be Single fell out of the top five as it slipped two spots to this week’s number seven. I do not expect that I or any other critic will ever decide that “Gods of Egypt” is anything but awful. 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.
Kung Fu Panda 3 took in $8.90 million over the weekend.
Advertisement
“Eddie the Eagle and Triple 9 likely did not have huge budgets and ultimately may be profitable films, but they weren’t trying to create franchises with those”, Dergarabedian said.
