Tyler Morris
Staff Writer
Posted Feb 2, 2020
Back in 2015, Paramount Pictures released “Terminator Genisys,” a reboot film of the the popular Terminator franchise. Despite performing well at the box office, it was a massive critical disappointment with many calling the worst in the series—even worse than the previous entry, 2009’s “Terminator Salvation.” Now, four years after the release of “Genisys,” a brand new Terminator reboot has come out that serves as a direct sequel to the first Terminator film and “Terminator 2: Judgement Day.” This time, “Deadpool” director Tim Miller is at the helm and series creator James Cameron returns as an executive producer. Paramount hoped that this movie would serve as the start of a new Terminator trilogy and bring renewed interest to the series.
Unfortunately, things haven’t gone as planned. It’s opened to only $29 million in North America and $101 million internationally, against an estimated budget that lies between $185 to $196 million. It was apparent by the end of the opening weekend that “Dark Fate” had flopped. In addition to the budget, Paramount had also spent an additional $80 to $100 million on marketing. They would have needed to gross somewhere around the $450 to $480 million range to just break even.
While the critic reviews were mostly positive, audiences were disappointed and frustrated by “Dark Fate.” It didn’t take long for word of mouth to spread about its quality. One of the largest problems that lead to this film’s financial failure was a lack of interest, aside from the generic and unimpressive trailers. There just isn’t enough interest in the Terminator franchise right now. If they wanted people to see this film, they would've had to do something truly special and unique that could really get people’s attention. Having individuals such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton to return won’t guarantee filled theater seats.
Those who did see the film were disappointed in the direction of the story and found the new characters to be uninteresting, as they failed to leave the same impressionable mark as the characters this series started with. For me personally I think that 2003’s “Terminator 3: Rise of The Machines” did a better job at being a sequel to “Terminator 2.” It had much more impressive special effects and action scenes. It also properly connected the overarching time travel-based storyline.
Due to the disappointing results of “Salvation” and “Genisys,” “Dark Fate” was the last chance that Paramount had to really hit it big with Terminator. If this movie didn’t do well, there was no way that Paramount or any other studio was going to green light another sequel. With the low box office numbers and negative audience reception, it’s clear that this franchise has been terminated.
“Dark Fate” was just one of a string of box office flops/disappointments that came out last fall. One of the biggest losses was another franchise revival that also came from a financially struggling studio, with Sony Pictures movie reboot of “Charlie’s Angels.” Despite the failure of the 2011 T.V. reboot, Sony Pictures decided to move forward with a movie reboot of “Charlie’s Angels” that included a new cast, and Elizabeth Banks directing. Despite having some talent behind the project, “Charlie's Angels” just couldn’t grasp audiences attention like the first two films, and ultimately ended up flopping against “Ford V. Ferrari.”
It opened with a dismal $8 million domestically against an estimated budget of over $50 million. This was another box office disappointment that the studio didn’t see coming. Everybody has had their own theories as to why it flopped as hard as it did, and I have a few ideas of my own.
For starters, the casting choices for the three angels was rather weak. Casting Kristen Stewart in the lead was a decision that would end up shooting themselves in the foot. Although her acting has improved quite significantly since her work on the universally-disliked Twilight films, she was just not the right choice to cast in a reboot of something like “Charlie’s Angels.” She just isn't as memorable as past actresses in the franchise, such as the most famous of all the previous angels, Farrah Fawcett.
The movie heavily promoted its soundtrack as well, which included artists such as Ariana Grande and Miley Cyrus. This was another decision that backfired. While the original “Charlie’s Angels” film from 2000 included music from hard rock groups such as Aerosmith and Motley Crue. Both groups are beloved and liked by many. This new soundtrack includes more of the same generic pop music that infest today’s radio waves. Sure, Ariana Grande has plenty of fans, but no one is going to be rushing to buy a soundtrack because it has Miley Cyrus’s name attached to it.
Much like “Terminator: Dark Fate,” the movie had a forgettable trailer that didn’t leave much of an impact. It looked okay, but less like something you would want to see in theaters, and more of something you’d watch on T.V. after flipping through the channels looking for something to watch. The film also lacks the same feel and cheesy charm that made the previous iterations so enjoyable to view on T.V. or in the theater.
While Paramount and Sony experienced some financial losses, Warner Bros hit it big with “Joker.” Costing somewhere between $55 to $70 million, “Joker” ended up grossing over $1 billion worldwide, becoming the first R rated movie in the history of cinema to ever do so. “Joker” is a film that is very much unlike any comic book movie that has come before it. It could have easily just have been another DC movie. Instead, director Todd Philips made the movie into an original take on the origin of the iconic super-villian by turning it into a brutal, dramatic, character study, one that deals with issues regarding mental health and depression.
The whole thing is only uplifted by the amazing performance given by Joaquin Phoenix. Phoenix’s portrayal of the character rivals that of the performance given by Heath Ledger in 2008’s “The Dark Knight.” “Joker” managed to exceed expectations and has now been nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture.
The most infamous box office disaster in 2019 was none other than the movie adaption of “Cats.” Based off the popular Broadway musical, “Cats” was a production that was very hefty on motion-capture computer generated imagery, which caused the film’s budget to rise to $100 million. At one point there were rumors that “Cats” cost $300 million, but that turned out to be false. Even if the studio behind “Cats,” Universal Pictures, had enough confidence in the project to give the filmmakers a budget of more than $100 million. There’s no chance that it or any other studio, regardless of its size, would be willing to risk $300 million on a musical like “Cats.”
Universal decided to open the film the same weekend in December as the newest Star Wars movie, “Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker,” despite the fact that anyone would have called this a terrible move. Universal hoped that those who didn’t want to see Star Wars would go see “Cats” instead, but unsurprisingly this backfired. As of now, “Cats” has only made back $65 million, undoubtedly labeling it as a flop, while “The Rise of Skywalker” recently passed $1 billion worldwide.
Now, the film did do poorly in China, and has been seen by some as an underperformer. This is due to the fact that the previous two main entries in the series, 2015’s “The Force Awakens” and 2017’s “The Last Jedi,” each had a much higher box office gross. “The Rise of Skywalker” though was still an overall success, and performed a lot better than 2018’s “Solo: A Star Wars Story.”
“Cats” flopped because it was a costly adaptation that most audiences were not interested in seeing. The trailer had a reaction almost as bad as the original “Sonic The Hedgehog” movie trailer. Many complained about how creepy the computer generated anthropomorphic people were, and the film’s bad press about the release certainly didn’t help.
While there was a number of box office successes in 2019, there was also a surprising number of box office bombs as well. It will be interesting to see how this will influence any current films in pre-production or up for consideration and what decisions studios will make towards them.
