“The House” Craps Out!
Summer 2017 continues to lay an egg, as the new Will Ferrell / Amy Poehler comedy “The House” was the latest casualty!
This image is certainly ironic, as the film was the worst opening for the duo ever – a comedy that NOBODY wanted to pay out cash for!
Deadline.com has a great writeup on the box office debacle:
“This weekend Will Ferrell and Amy Poehler hit career box office lows as New Line/Village Roadshow/Warner Bros’ $40M-budgeted The House burned down to a $8.7M opening (figures as of Monday morning). For Ferrell, House reps his lowest live-action comedy opening from a major studio, while for Poehler, it’s certainly her lowest three-day for any major studio release that has featured her as the marquee draw.”
The article continues:
“The House’s failure comes as a shock. Exhibitors were in stitches over the clips Warner Bros. showed off at CinemaCon. Pairing the right stars is so vital when it comes to the genre, i.e. a Farrell and Mark Wahlberg combo has proven to sell more tickets with The Other Guys and Daddy’s Home than say Dax Shepard and Michael Pena in a reboot of antiquated 1980s series Chips ($18.6M domestic). This makes The House’s misfortune all the more a head scratcher. Saturday Night Live alums Ferrell and Poehler? Who wouldn’t want to watch that kind of crazy? Previously the two starred in 2007 ice skating comedy Blades of Glory ($33M opening, $118.6M) and saw better results.”
As you can see from the analysis, this opening of under $10-million was a box office disaster. For two stars of this caliber, it’s rather shocking that NO ONE showed up to see the film.
To be honest, I saw almost no advertising for the movie, and I’m not sure how much publicity the stars did as well, because I didn’t see anything…the trailer wasn’t very funny, which is a bad sign – in all, it seemed a very quiet marketing campaign for a major comedy with two big stars…
Bravo to Deadline.com for the analysis, and they have a great story about the status of big screen comedy right now, and you can see it here:
This is my third post about the number of box office bombs this summer, like the latest “Transformers” film, which opened 40% lower than the previous installment:
“The Mummy”, “King Arthur” and “Rough Night” are other examples – you can read my box office report here:
It has proven to be a rough summer at the box office, and “The House” burned down – we’ll see who’s next!
