Roland Emmerich’s latest film “Moonfall” failed to launch at the box office, bringing in just $10 million in North American theaters in its first weekend against a $140 million production budget; and even though distributor Lionsgate isn’t on the hook for that budget, it’s an example of how Emmerich’s brand of self-financed disaster epics might be another type of film that doesn’t work during a pandemic.
Let’s start with the obvious: “Moonfall” didn’t get any sort of traction with audiences or critics, earning a Rotten Tomatoes score of 42% and a C+ on CinemaScore. While moviegoers haven’t wholly rejected films with an apocalyptic bent — look at the success of Paramount’s “A Quiet Place Part II” last year — the films that have enjoyed the most success recently have been more upbeat in their escapism.
Granted, some films with bleaker outlooks such as Netflix’s “Don’t Look Up” have found success on streaming, and disaster films like Emmerich’s “2012” and Gerard Butler’s “Geostorm” saw surging upticks on streaming during lockdown. But right now, those who are seeing movies in theaters seem to want to spend their money on something brighter.
Just look at Sony’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” which is on the verge of passing $750 million domestically and topping “Avatar” for No. 3 on the all-time charts, or Universal’s “Sing 2,” which while well short of the domestic run of its 2016 predecessor has amassed $140 million in North American grosses. And last weekend, younger males eschewed the mass destruction of “Moonfall” in favor of the goofy pranks of “Jackass Forever,” which opened to $23.5 million.
“With ‘Don’t Look Up,’ you had a disaster film on streaming that was also a satirical comedy with a big cast. Streep was in it, DiCaprio was in it, Ariana Grande was in it,” Boxoffice Magazine analyst Shawn Robbins told TheWrap. “‘Moonfall’ had Halle Berry but there was nothing particularly new about its plot or its visuals that made people want to go out to theaters with COVID still around.”
Of course, Emmerich and his team never could have anticipated that “Moonfall” would come out in this climate when producers announced the project would be financed mostly by foreign distribution deals at Cannes in 2019. Lionsgate contributed a reported $15 million to the budget in exchange for North American distribution rights alongside a long list of other foreign distributors and financiers, including China’s Huayi Bros. in a $40 million deal.
On paper, that financing deal was seen as a win-win for everyone involved — and Emmerich had taken a similar approach on previous films like his 2019 WWII movie “Midway.” For Emmerich, the self-financed status of his films allows him to retain complete creative control, and for the distributors involved, it allows them to get their hands on a big-budget spectacle for theaters and streaming at a lower cost.
But no matter how they are financed, big-budget films like “Moonfall” need to find a global audience to truly be successful, and that is difficult in this COVID-saddled marketplace without a familiar franchise attached. While “Spider-Man: No Way Home” was able to ride the Marvel hype machine to a $1.7 billion global total in ticket sales, Universal’s “The 355,” a $75 million spy thriller that was also financed through Cannes sales deals, also tanked at the box office with just $23.7 million grossed worldwide since opening last month.
Though both “The 355” and “Moonfall” are original films, poor word-of-mouth sunk their theatrical prospects at a time when audiences are more selective than ever over what they’re willing to buy tickets and drive out to theaters with an N95 mask to see. At least for Lionsgate, releasing “Moonfall” won’t be a significant cost as studio sources say that they believe the film will leg out and turn a profit from a $10 million opening, though it is likely that profits will be very minimal.
Flashy disaster films like the ones Roland Emmerich makes will always be a part of the theatrical landscape. For decades, audiences have thrilled to watch cities getting smashed on the big screen, which is why films like “Independence Day” and “Jurassic World” have become hits. But as long as audiences feel like films like “Moonfall” don’t bring anything they haven’t seen before, global preproduction sales deals will be the only way to mitigate the risk enough for those films to get a theatrical release, if at all.
