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Battleship Sinks At The US Box Office But Makes Huge Money Overseas

Date: May 21, 2012 | Author: Josh Tyler | Category: Sci-Fi

The numbers are in and to no one’s surprise Battleship, the alien invasion sci-fi movie inspired by the Milton Bradley board game which has nothing to do with aliens, is a huge box office flop… but only in the United States.

In the USA where we’re often accused of being too dumb to know what’s good, Americans wisely avoided this sci-fi disaster in favor of seeing The Avengers. Battleship only opened at #2 with a meager $25 million which, in the past, might have sent a clear message to Hollywood. It might have let them know that this kind of watered down, shooting aliens only because it won’t offend anyone, science fiction isn’t worth doing anymore. But it won’t.

Instead the message Hollywood got this weekend was that movies like Battleship are still a cash-cow. They’ll get that message because even though the film was a total failure to earn in the United States it’s wildly popular overseas. So popular that they’ve already made their entire $209 million budget back. Sure Battleship has only made $25 million in the United States and likely won’t last in movie theaters more than a couple of weeks, but everywhere else in the world audiences are showing up to see it in droves. It’s made over $215 million dollars.

So maybe it’s time to start shifting the blame for Hollywood’s behavior from American stupidity to international ignorance. In particular someone needs to sit down and have a talk with Russia, Japan, South Korea, and the United Kingdom. They’ve been Battleship’s biggest supporters.

Don’t be surprised if, even though no one in the United States wants to see it, Battleship 2 gets greeenlit.

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Comments

  • RL

    The movie is basically Transformers and Top Gun rolled into one, if Maverick were a ship captain instead of a Navy pilot.

  • corrosivepress

    Don’t be so sure. Yeah, “Battleship” made money overseas and flopped in U.S., but that also means the studio blew its total wad. They can’t re-release it internationally to make up for short-falls in U.S. So, profit wise, it’s basically done (of course there is DVD and stuff, but that won’t make the same cash in the short term). Plus, the movie may have made it’s production costs back, but once you include costs for marketing/promotion, consumer products, etc. — the movie fell way, way short. Hollywood has already declared it a flop. And that perception is all the reality it needs to kill a sequel (which was actually being planned, until today).

  • …

    It’s because the American audience ruins movies for themselves with superman expectations. The state of the movie industry has a name nowadays. It’s called Creative Bankruptcy. It means we are stuck in a state where sequels, prequels, remakes, reboots, and heavy visual movies are very prevalent. Not that there is anything wrong with any of these movies but we are wishing for more original movies with better plots. Right? Well, when Inception came out it didn’t receive any praise from the larger american audience. It was both original and well thought out. However, since it was far beyond the imagination of some, we wound up hearing – “Oh, it’s stupid.” or “Oh, I didn’t get it.”

    Now do we really want movies with original plots and good stories? People don’t go to see movies nowadays unless they have an “impressive” follow up or an “explosive” trailer. Then we berate Transformers for too many explosions and not enough plot – when there is plot, it’s just being conveyed by cgi generated giant robots.

    If we wanted original, true-to-story, no explosions, well though out plot then Avengers wouldn’t be doing so well.

    I think people need to lighten up and enjoy movies for what they are – a whole lot of effort, vision, and art.

  • http://www.facebook.com/joel.coupland.3 Joel Coupland

    It opened against The Avengers in the US. It didn’t overseas. That’s all.

  • ThatGuy

    The release it internationally first because no matter how shitty a movie is; foreigners are more easily entertained by explosions and CG without understanding a single word or plot of the movie. That’s why studios will keep creating garbage like this, the money is international now.