‘Expendables 3’ Flops At Box Office
The highly-anticipated Expendables 3 was able to do what the other 2 Expendables movies did; fall flat.
The third and final installment of Sylvester Stallone’s Expendables movies is expected to rake in $15.3 million by Monday morning, a flop at the box office behind the winners of the movie week; Paramounts‘ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles lead the way with $26 million, followed by Disney’s Guardians of the Galaxy with $23 million, Fox’s Let’s Be Cops with $17 million, followed by Liongates ‘Expendables 3, with the Weinstein Company’s The Giver rounding out the top 5 with about $13 million, reports the Boston Herald.
Two possible reasons as to why the Stallone movie did not fare better than expected; the goal this weekend was $20 million. The first may be that today’s movie market are looking for Superheroes, not aging action heroes. However, the biggest reason for the drop is most likely the posting of the movie for download online in crystal clear digital. Since it appeared online over three weeks ago, the movie has been downloaded over 189,ooo times. A federal judge has recently granted Lionsgate a restraining order ceasing the illegal downloads. Still, this has happened before with a movie (X-Men Origins; Wolverine), and that movie still did well at the box office.
Even with the most star-studded cast of the three movies, having added Harrison Ford and UFC Ladies’ champion Ronda Rousey, the third installment will be the lowest-grossing film of the three. The original pic launched to $34.8 million in 2010 while the second installment debuted to $28.6 in 2012. Expendables 3 could miss the last film’s box office mark by more than $10 million.
Forbes offers two more reasons as to the lack of success for Expendables 3. The first is the PG-13 rating that was slapped onto the movie. Many studios are moving to get films that would traditionally be listed as “R” rating reduced to “PG-13” in the hopes that they can improve their number of younger moviegoers. Most times, people go see what they want to see, regardless of box office ratings. Besides, kids can still get into “R” movies with adult supervison.
Second is franchise fatigue, that even with newer stars and a bigger cast, people are already over the concept of the Expendables series, and want something new and different at the box office. Most people have seen these stars kill many people and blow stuff up numerous times, perhaps the moviegoer wants original heroes or storyline. One more theory has been espoused as to why Expendables 3 has faltered; It’s just not that good of a movie. Whereas the original Expendables relied on quality cast and good writing, this cast and script just doesn’t capture the energy of the first two Expendables.
With an overall production budget of $100 million, Lionsgate will have to rely on worldwide distribution for an improvement in box office numbers.
