‘Blade Runner’ carves out a middling $31.5 million
Blade Runner 2049 had the pedigree, the stars and the stellar reviews. But even though the highly touted sequel had seemingly everything going for it, something didn’t click with audiences.
The big-budget, handsomely crafted sequel to the 1982 sci-fi classic opened surprisingly weak at the box office. According to studio estimates Sunday, 2049 grossed $31.5 million, a poor start for a movie that cost at least $150 million to make.
The problem 2049 ran into is clear from the data: The audience was overwhelmingly male (71%) and older than 25 (86%). The movie, starring Ryan Gosling and Harrison Ford, simply failed to pull in moviegoers beyond fans of the 1982 original.
The opening was a blow to everyone involved. The glowingly reviewed film is directed by the sought-after Denis Villeneuve ( Arrival) and produced by Ridley Scott (who directed the original). Audiences liked the movie, too, giving it an A-minus on CinemaScore.
“I’m disappointed we didn’t have a larger result this weekend,” says Jeff Goldstein, president of domestic distribution for Warner Bros., which distributed the film domestically. “We had bigger expectations for the weekend. The tracking and the advance sales indicated that there would be a stronger number.”
The Kate Winslet-Idris Elba adventure romance The Mountain Between Us opened in second with $10.1 million. The film, which cost $35 million to make, chronicles the budding affection between two strangers whose charter plane crash-lands in the mountains.
The horror hit It followed in third with $9.7 million in its fifth week. The Stephen King adapta- tion has made $603.7 million worldwide.
The animated My Little Pony: The Movie finished fourth with
$8.8 million. But even it managed broader gender appeal than Blade Runner 2049: It drew a 59% female audience.
The spy spoof sequel Kingsman: The Golden Circle was fifth with $8.1 million.
But most were wondering what went wrong with Blade Runner 2049. Working against it was a lengthy 163-minute runtime. Great pains were taken to keep much of the film mysterious.
“It’s an intellectually charged, apocalyptic sci-fi story. It’s not a Close Encounters, it’s not Star Wars. It’s a challenging film. To me, those are the best type of films,” says Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at comScore. “But does it make it the most commercial? No.”
In a way, that makes 2049 the perfect heir to the original film. It, too, was a box office disappointment. Though a cult would gradually emerge over the years, propelled partly by a DVD release of a more acclaimed director’s cut, 1982’s Blade Runner collected
$6.2 million in its debut — or about $16 million in 2017 dollars.
So 2049 can claim one thing many recent sequels can’t: better box office than the original.
Figures numbers are expected Tuesday.