EDITORIAL: “Battleship: Why the $200 Million Dollar Bonanza Sunk At the Box Office”

May 29th, 2012

Boris Paskhaver

Is there any movie that can stop The Avengers? Now in its fourth week of release, the record-breaking action extravaganza has demolished or weakened every contender it has faced at the box office. Case in point: Universal Picture’s Battleship, a $209 million production that may actually torpedo its producer’s annual profits into a loss.

The good news: Battleship actually broke a record of its own in its opening weekend. The bad news: the record was for the lowest opening ever for a movie with a budget over $200 million. Ouch. With The Avengers still going strong and Men in Black 3 stealing the spotlight this weekend, Battleship plummeted to $10.8 million in its second round with moviegoers.

Luckily for Universal, the domestic dud appears to be performing better overseas and the film producer will aim to recuperate its costs there. Why did the naval drama fail to make a blip on moviegoer’s radars? Here’s why Battleship was a miss at the box office:

1. No star power attached

Rihanna may be the biggest pop star in the world, Brooklyn Decker may be the most beautiful woman in the world, and Liam Neeson just exudes heaps of masculine awesomeness, but are any of them serious names to attach to such a massive production? Battleship had nobody to lure audiences in.

2. Adapting a board game. Seriously?

Some blamed poor reviews for the lackluster performance but an analysis of similar movies shows no identical pattern. Brain-dead big-budget blockbusters like Transformers have done just fine with mediocre reviews. Older moviegoers that pay more attention to critics aren’t interested in the explosions and effects in the first place.

So why the difference in results? Transformers was the quintessential example of a franchise. Its robots touch everything from action figures to novelizations to television shows. In sharp contract, Battleship is a 45-year-old board game that most people keep in the back of their minds and in the back of their closets, covered in a blanket of dust. It had no modern appeal.

What’s worse is that board game manufacturer Hasbro still has plans to convert other properties into motion pictures. Good luck to them on the Ouija and Monopoly adaptations.

3. Have naval movies ever proved appealing?

Films set in the ocean just don’t make a splash at the box office.

Many may not be old enough to remember the financial disaster that was Waterworld. Upon its release in summer 1995, the Kevin Costner-led post-apocalyptic flick was the most expensive film ever produced. It performed so poorly domestically that some critics predicted an end to Costner’s career.

Just half a year later, pirate epic Cutthroat Island embarrassed itself with a result so underwhelming that it bankrupted production company Carolco Pictures. How bad was it? The Guinness Book of World Records awarded it the prestigious “Largest Box Office Loss” award. That bad.

Or how about Exhibit 3: Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, the critically acclaimed Russell Crowe vehicle that was nominated for 10 Academy Awards but was completely abandoned at the domestic box office?

Moviegoers just don’t like ships and naval-related pics. So why did Hollywood expect a different result with Battleship?

Written by: Boris Paskhaver