‘Mortdecai’ Is Johnny Depp’s Fifth Box Office Flop In A Row


It appears that Oscar nominee Johnny Depp will have another flop to add to his resume with Mortdecai.

According to a report from Deadline, Depp’s latest only brought in $1.6 million on Friday in 2,648 theaters. Analysts are predicting that Mortdecai will pull in just $4.6 million once the weekend is over. This is lower than the $10-$12 million that its studio, Lionsgate, had predicted.

Mortdecai will have a worse opening than Johnny Depp’s 2011 film, The Rum Diary. That film cost $45 million to make, and accumulated $13 million by the end of its theatrical run.

Johnny Depp hasn’t had a hit since 2011’s Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. According to Box Office Mojo, even though it was the lowest-grossing entry in the Pirates franchise, the fourth film did bring in more than $1 billion worldwide.

Ever since the most recent Pirates film, Depp has starred in Dark Shadows, The Lone Ranger, and Transcendence, all of which cost $100 million or more and brought in less than their production budgets. Mortdecai cost just $60 million to make, but with the way it looks now, it’s unlikely that the film will earn more than its budget.

Film critics were also not impressed with Mortdecai. Rotten Tomatoes has Johnny Depp’s latest listed at a 13 percent approval rating at the time of this publication, with only seven of the 56 reviews considered positive.

Stephen Holden of the New York Times wrote that Depp is able to become the character of Charlie Mortdecai without any restraint. But the problem is that it’s not a good character for Depp to play.

“Charlie Mortdecai, a bumbling aristocratic bon vivant and sociopath who lives beyond his means and deals in stolen art, is a vehicle for Mr. Depp to turn into a kind of Austin Powers manqué. There is no wink behind the wink because Mr. Depp is so busy showing off.”

But Jesse Hassenger of the A.V. Club wrote that there are some who might actually enjoy Mortdecai.

“It’s exactly the sort of oddball trifle, like Hudson Hawk, that tends to attract the ire of baffled audiences and grumpy critics. It’s also the sort of oddball trifle that, like Hudson Hawk, will put certain aficionados of silliness in a pretty good mood.”

And while Mortdecai is the latest flop that features Johnny Depp as the lead, the 51-year-old actor did have a small role in Rob Marshall’s Into the Woods, which has been performing well in theaters. Deadline reports that the musical is looking to have a domestic total of $121.3 million by the end of this weekend.

[Image credit: Lionsgate Films via Moviepilot]

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