The film is one of two big summer releases for Paramount, which has struggled at the box office.
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That’s according to the New York Times, which notes it cost Paramount and MGM something like $100 million to make.
In a late summer line-up comprising such movies as bawdy foodstuff comedy Sausage Party, comedy-drama War Dogs, and Laika’s animated film Kubo and the Two Strings, Ben-Hur had to make do with a debut at the fifth spot in the USA top 10.
Meanwhile, Suicide Squad enjoyed a third week at the top of the chart despite its nearly unanimous critical panning. Ben-Hur received a lowly 28% critical approval rating on the review aggregation site RottenTomatoes.com, while audiences graded the drama an A-minus at CinemaScore. Cinema Blend reported that it garnered an additional $20 million to its domestic total of $262 million.
Finishing No. 2 this weekend was Sausage Party ($15.1 million), which was in its second weekend. The film still unknown budget grossed over $ 14 million in revenue. Bad Moms (estimated $8.1 million) and Jason Bourne (estimated $8 million), in the meantime, have been successes at the box office, but Jason Bourne has only broken even thanks to worldwide gross (though it is now the third most successful film in the franchise, both domestically and abroad).
Also at the specialty box office, Natalie Portman’s directorial debut, A Tale of Love and Darkness, finally opened at the specialty box office more than a year after premiering at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival.
However, in today’s moviegoing landscape, if audiences want to see a movie in theaters that’s two hours long, it better feature all our favorite superheroes jammed in it or Leonardo DiCaprio frozen in the wilderness fighting a bear and sleeping inside a horse.
The weekend also marked the launch of “War Dogs”, an off-beat comedy about weapons dealers, picked up a modest $14.3 million for a fourth-place finish.
“Ben-Hur” derailed spectacularly at the multiplexes this weekend, as the latest attempt to revive the chariot racing epic opened to an anemic $11.4 million. We don’t know for sure if any of these films will be expanding in the weeks and months to come. The Oscars for William Wyler’s 1959 classic with Charlton Heston included awards for best picture, best actor and best director.
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Ben-Hur is still to be released in a few key markets, including United Kingdom and Korea, but it will need to do exceptionally well to recuperate its budget and marketing costs.
