‘The Fall Guy' Expected to Have $60M in Losses

This past May, the summer movie season kicked off with David Leitch’s “The Fall Guy,” but it sadly underperformed with a $85M domestic run. Its worldwide tally was around $165M. All of this on a reported budget of $150M.

So much for the sequel, which has already been written. “The Fall Guy” was made available on PVOD a mere three weeks after it was released in theaters. They didn’t even wait to see if this one had legs. At this rate, Variety is reporting that the film is estimated to lose $60 million in its theatrical run. What I don’t get are their numbers. They say that the film needed $275 million-$300 million to turn a profit — its theatrical run is practically over … doesn’t this mean its losses are well over $100M?

So, what gives? Why did ‘Fall Guy’ underperform, even with a decent 7.3/10 on IMDb and 90% positive on PostTrak? Deadline claimed 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

A source told Deadline that Universal “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, 2022’s “Bullet Train,” opened with $30 million and barely broke even.

Also, did general audiences even know that “The Fall Guy” was based on a TV show? There’s barely been a lasting fanbase for that series, 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 there are less people 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.