With great reviews, tons of publicity, and two more-popular-than-ever movie stars in the leads, The Fall Guy should have kicked the summer 2024 box office off in high style. Indeed, Hollywood was expecting a $40 million opening (we expected a more modest $35 million). Still, according to Deadline’s early numbers, The Fall Guy looks like it won’t even crack the $30 million mark. This is a bad opening for a mega-budget action movie and seems to be further evidence that movie stars – as we used to know them – don’t exist anymore.
Think about it. Is there any actor or actress who can guarantee a movie “opens”? It used to be that people like Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Julia Roberts, Clint Eastwood, Tom Cruise, and a bunch of others were considered “bankable” in that having them in your film was basically “money in the bank.” There’s not really anyone like that left anymore, with audiences, perhaps, taking their new stars for granted.
Why?
Part of it has to do with streaming. While Emily Blunt has been in many box office hits, she also did a streaming show (The English) that went totally under the radar, and no one seemed to watch her Netflix movie, Pain Hustlers. The same goes for Ryan Gosling. Barbie was huge, but did anyone really watch The Grey Man on Netflix? And before you go saying Gosling is nothing without his Barbie co-star Margot Robbie, consider that the two movies she made just before that one were box office disasters, Amsterdam and Babylon. It also doesn’t help how small release windows have gotten. Why would people shell out money to see The Fall Guy in theaters when they know there’s a good chance that they’ll be able to see it at home within six weeks? If anything, its poor box office showing guarantees it’ll be available digitally that much sooner.
Whatever the case may be, this is an ominous start to the summer of 2024, with only Marvel’s Deadpool and Wolverine being considered a super sure thing at the box office. The rest of the weekend isn’t much better. While Zendaya’s Challengers is expected to have a decent hold in second place, the new horror flick, Tarot (which was eviscerated on our first horror live stream last night) is a disaster with a $6.25 million weekend in the cards (pun intended). It’s being beaten by the Star Wars: Episode I: The Phantom Menace re-release, which should make over $7 million.
Do you shell out money to see The Fall Guy? Let us know if you think it’s worth seeing.