MOVIE NEWS – The Fall Guy is currently a failure at the box office. What is the reason for the lack of success?

With a deft mix of action, comedy and romance, and the endearing chemistry of leads Emily Blunt and Ryan Gosling, the action-comedy The Fall Guy seemed like the perfect movie to kick off the 2024 summer box office season. This is the first summer season since 2009 not to be launched by a Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) movie.

Loosely based on the 1980s TV series of the same name, The Fall Guy stars Gosling as Colt Seavers, a Hollywood stuntman who quit his career after a previous stunt went awry. But now he returns to help his former girlfriend, Jody Moreno, played by Blunt, who is making her directorial debut in Sydney, Australia.

After the star Jody suddenly disappears, Colt is tasked with finding the star and saving the film…

However, despite all its seemingly appealing elements, The Fall Guy ended up being one of the biggest box office flops of 2024. One of the reasons for the film’s disappointing performance is that the film, which is an ode to Hollywood stuntmen and directed by former Hollywood stuntman David Leitch, is too “inside Hollywood” to appeal to a broad and young audience. Others say many viewers simply decided to wait until they could watch The Fall Guy via streaming.

The Fall Guy fell short of revenue expectations

In its opening weekend in the US, The Fall Guy, which was expected to take between $30 and $40 million, grossed $27.7 million. This was particularly disappointing given that the film’s release was accompanied by generally positive critical reviews and strong marketing.

While the $27.7 million total was good enough to keep The Fall Guy at the top of the US box office, it was a symbolic victory in that it overtook the re-release of Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace…

The only other debut film, the low-budget supernatural horror film Tarot, came in fourth. The total $27.7 million is further reduced because The Fall Guy was released in over 4,000 theatres.

The “star power” of Emily Blunt and Ryan Gosling was only limited

Given that The Fall Guy is based on a 1980s TV series that younger audiences may not be familiar with, the film’s main selling point is the pairing of Emily Blunt and Ryan Gosling. Both are on top thanks to Oscar nominations and triumphs after the 2023 blockbusters Oppenheimer (Blunt) and Barbie (Gosling).

However, Barbie and Oppenheimer’s breakout box office performances provided a misleading sample of the kind of box office appeal that Blunt and Gosling, now 41 and 43, respectively, brought to The Fall Guy, especially among younger audiences.

They are the ones for whom the brand is otherwise irrelevant. This is also reflected in the film’s audience tracking data, in which people under the age of 25 make up less than 30% of the film’s cinema audience.

The Fall Guy was eclipsed by the Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

In its second weekend, the movie finished second at the domestic box office, earning approximately $13.7 million, a 51% drop from its previous total of around $49.6 million.

It grossed $54 million in theatres overseas, bringing The Fall Guy to over $103 million worldwide.

The Fall Guy was quickly pushed out of the top spot on the domestic grossing list by the fourth part of the Planet of the Apes reboot franchise, the epic science fiction Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes. The latter grossed $56.5 million in US theatres and $72.5 million overseas. That means an opening weekend total of around $129 million worldwide.

With an estimated $80 million to $100 million in marketing costs, The Fall Guy, which will finish well under $100 million in U.S. theatres, will need to gross around $310 million to $350 million worldwide to break even at the box office.

The movie will be a disastrous box office failure for distributor Universal Pictures. They can only hope that the film either does spectacularly at the overseas box office, where it is currently languishing behind the new Planet of the Apes or becomes a sensation on Universal’s Peacock streaming service to offset the film’s massive theatrical loss. The Fall Guy can already be seen in cinemas.

Source: The Guardian