Moviegoers are bored with the final frontier.
Despite boasting Will Smith as its lead, the sci-fi thriller “After Earth” mustered only third place and came in $10 million below analysts’ projections this weekend at theaters. The film marked the third big-budget science-fiction film to fall flat in less than two months.
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan, “After Earth” collected $27 million, according to studio estimates from Hollywood.com.
In April, Tom Cruise’s $120 million sci-fi film “Oblivion” managed $88 million — not a flop, but well below Cruise’s average haul of $97 million a movie.
Last month, the $190 million “Star Trek Into Darkness” opened to $70 million, $5 million less than the 2009 reboot, “Star Trek.”
“After Earth” appears headed for a more dire fate. Excoriated by critics, the $130 million story of a post-apocalyptic planet landed behind “Fast & Furious 6” in its second weekend and “Now You See Me,” a caper about bank-robbing magicians that exceeded forecasts by the same amount “Earth” fell short.
Even with hits like “Avatar” and the “Star Wars” series, science fiction has never been an easy sell in Hollywood. Just 19 sci-fi adventures have crossed the $100 million mark in the history of film, according to Box Office Mojo.
Compare that with the nascent digital 3-D genre. Already, 56 digital 3-D films have crossed the blockbuster threshold, Box Office Mojo says.
It didn’t help that few considered “After Earth” a good film, in any realm. Only 12 percent of critics recommended the movie, says RottenTomatoes.com. And a paltry 54 percent of fans liked it, the polling site says, making “Earth” the biggest flop yet of 2013.
“This is not 10 years ago when Will Smith was at the height of his box-office powers,” says Tim Briody of Boxofficeprophets.com. “And Shyamalan has been a box-office punchline for several years now as he tries to recapture the lightning in a bottle that was “The Sixth Sense.”
The silver lining, Briody says: “With atrocious reviews and terrible word-of-mouth, the opening could have been much worse.”
“Fast & Furious,” meanwhile, continues to chug along. The latest installment of the octane-addicted franchise took the No. 1 spot for a second consecutive weekend with $34.5 million and lifted its overall ticket sales to $170.4 million.
“Now You See Me,” meanwhile, surprised analysts with a second-place finish and $28.1 million. The movie, starring Jesse Eisenberg and Morgan Freeman, didn’t exactly wow critics, 43 percent of whom gave it a thumbs-up. But 76 percent of fans said they enjoyed it, RottenTomatoes.com reports.
The animated fantasy “Epic” was fourth with $16.4 million, followed by “Star Trek Into Darkness” with $16.4 million for fifth place.
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