Marketing can’t save Allegiant
No amount of slick marketing can sell a terrible movie.
That was the consensus among Hollywood executives and box office analysts over the weekend, as yet another stinker fell off Lionsgate’s troubled assembly line: The Divergent Series: Allegiant — Part 1, which received a blisteringly bad response from fans and critics alike, took in about $29 million at North American theaters, or 44 percent less than initial results for the 2015 installment in this series.
Allegiant, which cost about $150 million to make and market, follows Lionsgate misfires like Gods of Egypt, The Choice and The Last Witch Hunter, all of which suffered because they were poorly made, analysts said. Only a couple of years ago, studios were able to use marketing tricks to disguise flawed films, but word of mouth now moves at lightning speed on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and other social networks.
Lionsgate, which has watched its stock price fall about 45 percent since November, declined to comment.
It’s a new low for the YA series based on Veronica Roth’s novels, which both opened north of $50 million, but not unexpected. Lionsgate broke up Roth’s final book into two movies, the second of which, Ascendant, rolls out next year. And, like Twilight and The Hunger Games, it’s not unusual for Part 1 of a two-film finale to fall short of some of its predecessors.
The No. 1 movie for the weekend was again Zootopia (Disney), which took in about $37.2 million, for a three-week domestic total of about $201 million, according to comScore, which compiles ticketing data.
Zootopia is now on track to be Disney’s highest-grossing non-Pixar animated feature. Internationally, it has grossed an additional $389 million, for a global haul of just under $600 million.
Allegiant was second. Third place went to the religious film Miracles From Heaven (Columbia Pictures), which over-performed pre-release analyst expectations to take in about $15 million, for a total since arriving March 16 of $18.4 million. Miracles, which stars Jennifer Garner, cost just $13 million to make.
Audiences, who were 65 percent female and 75 percent over the age of 25, gave the film an A+ CinemaScore, which bodes well for its longevity going into the Easter holiday weekend.
It’s no secret that there have been a slew of faithbased breakout hits, but not many of them have mainstream Hollywood stars on the level of Garner and Queen Latifah.
The fourth slot went to the Paramount thriller 10 Cloverfield Lane, the successor to Cloverfield from producer J.J. Abrams, which added $12.5 million over the weekend. 10 Cloverfield’s cumulative gross stands at about $45.2 million. That counts as a major score for the studio, given that the reported production budget was a modest $5 million.
Landing at No. 5 was Fox’s comic-book fantasy Deadpool with $8 million, which is still quite alive well into its second month of release.
Among specialty films, The Bronze stumbled in its premiere for Sony Pictures Classics. The offbeat comedy about competitive gymnasts starring Big Bang Theory’s Melissa Rauch earned just $421,434 on 1,167 screens for a disappointing finish.