The latest and, most trustworthy numbers, have “The Fall Guy” opening with around $27 million this weekend. Some, like Showbiz411’s Roger Friedman, have it at $25 million, but I don’t believe it’ll go that low. Regardless, whichever number is correct, they all spell bad news. Universal is looking at major losses here.
Even worse, the ‘Fall Guy’ budget, which was originally reported at $120 million, then $130 million, is now said to be $150 million, according to Deadline. That’s more than how much “Barbie” cost.
So, what gives? Why is ‘Fall Guy’ underperforming like this, even with a decent 7.3/10 on IMDb and 90% positive on PostTrak? Deadline says the film might have been too “inside Hollywood” for audiences. “Why do young people want to see this movie?” says a film finance source to the trade
“They should have spent like [Sony’s] Tom Rothman: Make it for $80M. Why is Universal spending the extra money? Instead of spending $220M-$230M between production and marketing costs, they could have pulled this off for $160M-$180M,” added the source..
They’re right. It was a misguided decision for Universal to greenlight this film with a budget anywhere over $100 million, especially after Leitch’s last film “Bullet Train,” opened with $30 million and barely broke even.
Also, did you know ‘Fall Guy’ is based on a TV show? There’s barely been a lasting fanbase for it, but for some reason Universal decided to commit to a movie version of it.
The main lesson that needs to be gathered from this latest Hollywood flop is actually quite simple — studios know that much less people are buying movie tickets these days, so it should be very important to be responsible and not go overbudget. And yet, we keep seeing all of these Hollywood movies with astronomical costs attached to them. This trend will have to eventually end, and soon.
Remember when, back in August, we learned “The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth” would be playing in only around 350 U.S. theaters, "maybe fewer"? Well, it's fewer. A lot fewer.