Earlier this month, Borderlands arrived in theaters to horrendous reviews and bad box office numbers. At the time, many assumed it might be the biggest cinematic dud of 2024. But, that title is now held by the newly released Crow reboot.
The idea of rebooting The Crow was already a strange and controversial one. Sure, the original 1994 film was a small but profitable hit, but it is more widely known for the tragedy surrounding the death of Brandon Lee during its production. The following sequels to the OG Crow failed to find success. Most people believed it was wrong to even reboot the series. Yet, Hollywood went ahead and made a reboot anyway. And what do you know, it’s flopping hard!
The Crow reboot released on August 23 to negative reviews from critics and moviegoers. After its opening weekend, it only earned $4.6 million domestically at the box office. Yikes! In comparison, Borderlands made over $8.5 million during its first weekend.
After about five days in theaters, The Crow has made less than $10 million. Meanwhile, Borderlands—which is reportedly already getting a home release in late August—is sitting at a cool $25 million worldwide at the box office.
I’ve heard about both of these releases for the first time recently and had no idea they were out, so problem number 1 identified.
I mean, how do you typically hear about movies? I saw trailers for both at the last movie I was at, and Borderlands had a pretty big ad run.
Yeah I never go to theaters. I hadn’t heard anything about the crow but borderlands was pretty much unavoidable. I saw ads for that thing absolutely everywhere.
I didn’t, but I would have gone to see it if I knew.
No… Don’t say that about your self. Life is worth more than that.
Nah it ain’t
Sometimes I watch Mystery Science Theatre 3000, I have literally no narrative standards.
I don’t go to movies very often, but I might if I heard more about what is playing. Targeting ads at people already viewing them regularly seems unsustainable.
Although they are the ones who go to the cinema regularly. Targeting them at people who don’t go seems a waste.
But if they stop going at any point then they stop hearing about it. Its a naturally shrinking demographic.
You need to reach out to new audiences to replace old ones. We need ads at locations and on platforms frequented by youth (under 30) to see good box office returns for obscure films.
Since I don’t go to the theater, watch tv, use adblock on the internet, and don’t follow any movie related news sources… I learn about movies by people complaining about how bad they are.
Problems 1 and 2 are: no-one thought this was a good idea when they were announced and that turned out to be the case. Not letting people know was them cutting their losses - Borderlands ad spend was very much lower than a film of that budget should have had and it’s likely down to the fact that they knew it’d crash and burn so they didn’t want to throw good money after bad.
I thought it was a good idea when it was Jason Momoa as The Crow but that’s just cause I think he is a secret emo and it would have been funny.
why advertise bad movies? just a waste of money doing marketing
Why create bad movies? It’s a waste of money in the first place.
Well the Borderlands movie gave a bunch of Hollywood socialites a vacation in Budapest before the covid restrictions were completely released in California… So probably for reasons like that.
Well they don’t always know ahead of time the movie will be bad, but once the movie is finished or nearly finished they can watch the movie and decide if it’s worth a lot of marketing or not
While true it also becomes a self fulfilling prophecy though.
Because our metric for good and bad is whether or not a large number of people payed to see it.
Hollywood Accounting might see it as a loss, but sometimes they seem to want to kill a project for shits and giggles, like they did to Treasure Planet.
You want to know how to make almost every movie a good movie? Target the correct audiences.