Landing in fourth position [on the box-office charts] is another one of the weekend's new wide releases, Michael Bay's 13 Hours, which tallied an estimated $16 million for the three-day weekend with Paramount estimating $19 million for the four-day. This is Bay's first film to gross less than $20 million in its first three days since The Island back in 2005. Budgeted at $50 million, it should push to end up grossing somewhere right around $45-50 million for its domestic run, perhaps lower than the $49.8 million Pain and Gain brought in back in 2013.So it's Michael Bay's worst-opening movie in a decade, and it may not even make its budget back. Oops.
Scott Mendelson of Forbes thought it might do a lot better. I did, too:
... when I referred to 13 Hours as a would-be “next American Sniper,” when the first trailer dropped last July, it was merely on the notion that the film might capitalize from the unexpected popularity of the Clint Eastwood action drama, in a sense playing to at least a decent chunk of the audience that turned that Bradley Cooper film into a $350 million sensation.... I still find it a little surprising that this Michael Bay-directed opus will end up being the least successful of the recent spate of early year military action movies.But as Mendelson notes, the moviegoers who flocked to American Sniper and another hit, Lone Survivor) apparently included people who just wanted to go to an action movie -- not angry right-wingers exclusively. Mendelson thinks the marketing of 13 Hours as a political film may have alienated the apolitical action-film audience:
... it’s quite possible that the distinctly partisan nature of the narrative surrounding the Benghazi attacks basically scared off everyone except the would-be “loyalists.” Say what you will about how certain demographics reacted to American Sniper and Lone Survivor, but Warner Bros./Time Warner Inc. and Universal/Comcast Corp. were able to make the sell as apolitical military action-ers with big movie stars and mainstream aspirations.By contrast, 13 Hours was being sold as a Hillary Clinton hatefest, with Donald Trump giving away tickets to a screening in Iowa, while another screening at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, attracted quite a few anti-Hillary attendees, as we learned from Gawker's Christopher Hooks, who was in attendance:
Certainly, the people who’d come to the stadium because they didn’t like Clinton felt fired up after seeing it. “She’s a piece of shit,” said one man who declined to give his name and didn’t make eye contact. “But I already knew she’s a piece of shit.”Hillary Clinton told Jake Tapper that she's too busy campaigning to see the movie, an assertion that infuriates conservatives. Apparently, a lot of other Americans are too busy to see it, too.
“I hope it defeats Hillary,” said another, Don Lochran. “They covered the whole thing up.” It was Lochran who then suggested bombing them all.
Others were less sanguine. “Oh yeah. I’d shoot Hillary Clinton in the fuckin’ head. I don’t like the bitch at all,” said Len Toomey, who identified himself as a veteran of Desert Storm and Somalia. He’d seen the movie with some VFW friends. “Choke her. She should be in the pisser and I should be pissin’ on her every night.”
(Mendelson link via Billmon.)
After reviewing Rotten Tommatoes:
ReplyDelete1. Those who've actually gone out and paid money to see it, so far, reported liking it almost as much as the crowd that went out and watched American Sniper.
2. The 2 crowds were not the same folks; AOT, the Sniper crowd was larger, over a longer period, & (I'm guessing) more [uh] diverse.
3. Sniper was "certified fresh" with a pretty good score from "all critics" & even a bit higher one from "top critics".
4. 13 has been "certified rotten" & has both a meh score from "all critics" & even somewhat lower from "top critics".
5. I haven't seen either movie,
6. & probably won't,
7. ever.
Fasten your seat belts, if Len Toomey's any indication it's going to be a bumpy night.
ReplyDeleteThe cretins only started despising/fearing the current Pres. in late 2007; they've been two-minute hating Mme. Secretary for about 25 yrs., & they seem to be near critical mass.
First sentence of this post needs two corrections.
ReplyDeleteMonsieur Bouffe, je do believe that
ReplyDelete(1) le assembled clans you assert 'did not begin h8ing our current preznit until 2007' in point of fact h8ted him more locally in & about Illinois (a more rel8ful & focused sort of h8, given neither his active intentions nor his particip8ion were formally announced before February of that year;
(2) mais even before 2007, a fairly fair (blancity blanc) swath of those clans had been h8ing on folks with the same taste in skin tone & the same preference in paternal ethnic persuasion for way over a century and a half, such that it wasn't exactly necessoire for them to make any concerted effort to newly acquire their h8red of anything about him; and
(3) exactly how practically NEWS-worthy do you imagine the content of your post to be?
Hmm...
ReplyDelete"Saving Private Ryan" was a huge hit.
"Demonizing Hillary CLinton," uhm...
Not so much, I guess.
I wonder how many times the GOP Presidential candidates paid to see it?
Never-the-less, U, Bouffant makes a valid point: it's roughly a twenty-five to ten ratio, and long my lament that anyone who knows what a shitstorm this will be, especially in light of the last ten years, but is willing to go through with it doesn't have the best interests of the rest of us at heart.
ReplyDeleteFirst sentence of this post needs two corrections.
ReplyDeleteThanks -- fixed now.
I wouldn't have gone with the possessive "mission's not accomplished" preferring "was not" or perhaps wasn't" accomplished, though I'm sure Mrs Beasley back at the reservation reform school would have insisted on "has not been." That's an unruly bunch of words to fit together.
ReplyDelete