The Last Duel is officially Ridley Scott’s worst-performing box office premiere
The medieval-set drama pulled in a measly $4.8 million over its opening weekend
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After raking in a meager $4.8 million during its box office debut, Ridley Scott’s epic The Last Duel enters The Flop Zone. The film has earned the title of Scott’s worst-performing premiere ever, as per The Hollywood Reporter. Whether the blame is on poor marketing, an older target audience, or having to compete with Halloween Kills… that’s all up for debate. But The Last Duel is a significant low for the prolific director behind successes such as Alien, Blade Runner, and Gladiator.
The 14th century French-set film boasted heavy hitters Matt Damon, Adam Driver, Ben Affleck, and Jodie Comer, and so far has received glimmering reviews from critics. However, it simply has not performed when it comes to theater ticket sales, earning a fraction of its $100 million budget.
Prior to The Last Duel, Scott’s biggest flop was the Christopher Columbus colonization tale, 1492: Conquest Of Paradise (1992), which earned a mere $7 million.
Really, most of the films that flourished this year have been Marvel features, such as Black Widow, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, and Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Seven Rings. Horror flicks like the recent Halloween Kills, A Quiet Place Part II, and Candyman, have also been successful. Even M. Night Shamaylan’s Old, about the beach that makes you old, earned $16 million on opening weekend.
No Time To Die pulled in a higher age range for its solid debut weekend, but this is typical for the older-leaning Bond fan demographic. Ticket sales still tanked going into its second weekend, and the film remains far from breaking even with its high budget ceiling.
While superheroes and scares can manage to get people out of their homes and into the theater this year, the current trend does not bode well for slow-burn dramas like The Last Duel.
The next test will be Denis Villeneuve’s Dune, which opens in U.S. theaters this weekend. Lots of films have been buoyed by dual streaming/theater release, and Dune follows suit with an HBO Max premiere the night before it arrives in theaters. Nonetheless, the industry is hoping this month’s release will kick off an avalanche of consistent theater attendance.
“Someone had to go first. We stood tall and the movie is doing well. Once people start coming back, they will keep coming back,” Erik Lomis tells The Hollywood Reporter. Lomis currently serves as the distribution president at United Artists Releasing, which handles No Time to Die in the states.
However, as one studio executive says, “The business can’t rely on Marvel characters alone.”
Scott has another chance to hit it out of the park this year will another Driver-led feature, The House Of Gucci, starring Lady Gaga.
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I’d like to think that the success of Marvel movies and such will open the door for more regular, pre-pandemic theater attendance when things go right again, but who knows.
Movies like this would fare far better on a streaming service right now. I would definitely turn this on this weekend as its right up my ally, but im not going to go to the theater right now and pay 15 bucks to see it
How dare the Hollwood Reporter slander Ridley Scott’s movie like this. They will be lucky if he doesn’t challenge them to some kind of formal conflict that would repair his wounded reputation.
“A fight to the death, Hollywood Reporter. Mano a mano, man to man. Just you and me and my bodyGUARDS!!!”
I blame the mullet.
I blame the asymmetric helmets.Nobody can watch that for long without giving themselves a headache.
Scars on his right cheek and he’s still wearing that helmet.Some people just don’t learn.
“lots of films have been buoyed by dual streaming/theater release, and Dune follows suit with an HBO Max premiere the night before it arrives in theaters.”Fake news. It starts streaming at 6:00 PM on Thursday, the exact same time Thursday previews happen at theaters.
Yeah the idea that movies come out on Fridays anymore is stupid. I feel like somewhere in the early 00’s someone realized that people over the age of 25 don’t want to see movies at midnight on a weeknight and started pushing screening to more reasonable times on Thursdays
Even M. Night Shamaylan’s Old, about the beach that makes you oldHey! Spoilers much?Now that I know the twist, what’s the point of seeing it?
But that’s not the twist. It’s how it makes you old that’s the twist. It’s the sun. It ages the skin and leads to nasty melanoma. Use sunscreen, kids.
That’s not the twist.
Pretty sure that’s the premise, not the twist.
Dude the fact that the beach makes you old is in the trailer. The twist is in the why and for what purpose and how to escape.
This doesn’t bode well for the upcoming parody spoof version of this tale, Chinbeardz Movie.
Or the upcoming porn parody, The Last Dildo.
Starring hologram Leslie Nielsen.
“All I’m trying to do, Mark, is help you understand that The Martian is merely a blip on an otherwise uninterrupted downward trajectory.”
The Martian sort of sucked.
I don’t know about that, but THE MARTIAN is absolutely the type of film where you know *exactly* what you’re getting. We all knew how that would end, so there wasn’t much tension.
Disagree. The Martian is kinda great. Its also a rare film these days that is not a kids movie but is also reasonable to let pretty much any age kid watch. Which makes its a perfect movie to suggest Grandpa watch with the kids when he is babysitting them and doesn’t want to watch “A God damn cartoon”
“So we get old, we cannah hack it and that’s it?”“Yeah.”“THAT’s your theory?!”“Yeah! Beautifully fucking illustrated!”
I’ve concerns as to how Dune will do now as it leaked online last weekend, and add that to the HBO Max premier it might end up being considered a flop even though an awful lot of people watched it.
I already got my copy of Dune off the Internet.I’ve read up to Page 157.
Take your damn star. I scared my cat cackling.
Last weekend? There’s been leaks of Dune out there for a month now.
Do leaks much affect box-office take for “see this in theatres or you might as well be watching it on your phone” movies? (especially movies whose plot points have been well known for longer than most people posting here have been alive) I’m not sure how this would even be calculated.
Honest studies of these sorta things have found that pirating movies rarely has that much impact on box office. Legal streaming, on the other hand, is a bit more complicated and needs more study. That being said, WB is putting a lot in ads for Dune and its doing really well over seas so I think it will be okay
A thought: Maybe people don’t want to see a movie about rape
Tell that to all the millions of people who watched THE LAST JEDI, which RAPED MY CHILDHOOD FOR TWO WHOLE HOURS!!!!!!!
Also it seemed boring.
It’s not
Yep, if Game of Thrones proved anything, it’s that there’s no audience for shows and movies with rape in them
Game of Thrones also had dragons. The Last Duel had a centuries-old “he said, she said” plot that spent three quarters of its run time on the three awful male leads and left the female lead as a cipher until the end of the story. “I May Destroy You” centered the woman in her own story, which is something Hollywood should consider as the rule when writing about rape. Or at least throw in more dragons. Something.
Rashomon is regarded as one of the greatest films of all time and must do pretty well sales wise because – going back to when they only did LaserDisc – I don’t think Criterion has ever taken it out of print.
I feel like the real problem here is that The Last Duel is a “prestige” film, that was likely only meant to barely break even theatrically but then get a big bunch of award nominations and turn a profit in rentals and sales.
But it’s an unusual situation because of COVID. Theaters are recovering fast, but they’re still not there yet and the release schedule has been seriously screwed up, so a lot of summer blockbuster fair is being released in the normally graveyard month of October.
If people are given a choice between James Bond vs Specter, Venom vs Carnage, Jamie Lee Curtis vs Michael Meyers, or Matt Damon in an old time-y costume vs Adam Driver in an old time-y costume, they’re not going to flock to that last one.
So, you want a movie with that centers its narrative around dragons dealing with rape? As in, a dragon raped by another dragon?A dragon that rapes a person?A person who rapes dragons?
Game of Thrones wasn’t about rape; if anything, its usage of rape was criticized for being totally unnecessary to the plot and gratuitous.The Last Duel is explicitly about rape.
Great analogy. One is a movie where rape is the driving force of the apex of the film (and bombed), whereas the other was an 8 season series about power that had a plotline with a daughter of a noble house being married to a man against her will and being raped by him (that was beloved for dozens of reasons unrelated to the rape storyline until it face planted the final 2 seasons)
I bailed on GoT in season 2 because of all the sexual violence.
Other thought: who would spend 100 million on a movie about rape
That’s how I feel. Life is hard enough, I want some escapism and fun.
its true. people just wanna watch cgi sparkles hit a cgi monster while a guy pretends to fly around a green screen. movies that are about actual human drama instead of something entirely designed to make as much chinese money as possible don’t really matter anymore.
$4.7 million that’s the price of the contract on Ms. Ella Yellich-O’Connor why $4.7 million because that’s $300,000 in expenses for the yacht to New Zealand the rubber dinghy the automatic weapons the travel expenses in New Zealand $1.1 million in cash for each of the kill team because that weighs sixty pounds plus which is the most you can carry over a long distance over broken ground in New Zealand with food water clothing and a pistol without seriously fucking yourself up why Ms. Ella Yellich-O’Connor why not she’s famous she’s got the same breasts as Jennifer Love-Hewitt who had the same breasts as Jodie Comer in that photograph of her for this movie that’s all it takes Ms. Yellich-O’Connor $4.7 million what a fucking insult
You think its the rape? I think its Damon’s hair cut that is driving people away
For me, it’s definitely both. Matt Damon is Matt Damon is Matt Damon… and a knight, he ain’t.
“The Accused” did well, and was well-reviewed.I am very interested in seeing “The Last Duel,” given its writers, actors and director. I’m also interested in seeing “Dune,” and “The Eternals.”I’m very NOT interested, however, in contracting COVID.You won’t see me in an enclosed theater with strangers for the foreseeable future.
Wait, this isn’t the sequel to the Stephen King trucking movie?
It also might be that it’s a movie about rape that spends two-thirds of its run time in the perspectives of two men, one being the rapist, ans shows the rape onscreen twice.But what should one expect from a movie about a woman being raped written mostly by two men—one of whom has literally groped an unwilling woman on camera, and the other who repeatedly interrupted a black woman to tell her about how diversity should work?
May I introduce you to Pornhub….
The trailer for this just left me bored. The actors are good but nothing about the story seemed interesting to me. I have a movie pass and I still couldn’t bring myself to go see it.
Maybe it’s because he called it “The LAST Duel”. As Scott himself has said, “It’ll never be as good as the first one”. note: I mean, sure, in that context he was talking about “Alien”…….but which of these 2 films will people still be talking about in 10 years? (or 5 years, or 3 months….)
> Whether the blame is on poor marketing, an older target audience, or having to compete with Halloween Kills… that’s all up for debate.
The older target audience didn’t hurt No Time to Die. Pretty sure it the marketing and tough competition didn’t help, but ultimately it was a nearly-three-hour long extremely violent hard-R costume drama about a sexual assault. It was doomed financially from the start and it’s a wonder is was made at all.
Yeah, so?
If the masses didn’t flood theaters to see tentpole releases, there was no chance they would risk it for The Last Duel.
This was the exact conversation in our house this weekend.
I decided to only watch horror this month… with the exception being the new Dune. Hopefully Last Duel will still be in theaters in November.
I mean the Last Duel is a bout a rape that you get to see three times, so that is kinda horrorific?
I thought it was only 2 times because Matt Damon’s character wasn’t present.
Thats a shame, I thought it was a pretty good adaptation of a pretty good book. I’m a history nerd so I’m probably bias.
A Good Year says hello.https://www.boxofficemojo.com/title/tt0401445/?ref_=bo_se_r_1Come on, guys.
The Last Duel has more than a few leads in the film that are totally miscast, I feel. Doesn’t gel at all.
It’s kinda weird that Damon and Driver are treated as peers and old friends — both are referred to as “old men” at one point — when there’s a very noticeable fourteen year age gap between them. Apparently Affleck wrote his part of the script for himself, and it’s not always well-concealed.
Affleck is seemingly being regarded as the best part of the film.
Yeah, in a supporting role that he took after he stepped down from the Driver role for scheduling reasons.
I’m looking forward to one day going to a theater, but for now I’ll be watching Dune on my projector with a 15′ screen. It’s close enough. But someday… .
But I wasn’t going to see The Last Duel anyway. First, it looks tedious; and second, I gave up on Ridley Scott a while ago.
15 feet. I am impressed. My basement home theater space caps me at 120″ screen. I also stupidly decided to start basement remodel project a few weeks back so my theater is pulled down and under drop cloths now. Now I got to watch Dune on a regular 55″ TV like a commoner 🙂
Yeah, it’s nice having high ceilings. It’s actually about 175″ but I round up. :)Bad timing on the remodel. Next time, you should plan your work around movie release dates!
The Last Duel is officially Ridley Scott’s worst-performing box office premiereSo, paradoxically, this must be Ridley Scott’s best movie and we’ll be praising it 20 years from now.
It’s not even his worst performing movie, A Good Year only did like 3 million opening weekend and barely cracked the top 10.
I also think this month has been absolutely stacked with releases that I can’t even keep up. Pair that with covid, and a movie set in the 14th century makes a tough sell
It’s a macho battle flick with Jason Bourne and Kylo Ren and Batman and swords and armor and mud and it’s also a Rashomon-style investigation of a seven-hundred-year-old rape trial and also it doesn’t listen to the woman until the final third and also it’s filmed in that miserable, washed-out, essentially-monochrome style of the ’00s and also it has extremely silly haircuts.I just don’t know who this movie is intended for.
Me! I prefer low-key Ridley Scott working with a tight cast much more to big spectacle/massive ensemble Scott. I’m glad he made this film for me.
Ridley Scott needs to make another Matchstick Men.
MORE HOVIS ADS, I SAY!
Apple ads, too.
Let’s not overlook another piece of the puzzle: Disney inherited this film from Fox Searchlight during the 2019 merger. And they don’t seem especially eager to support holdover projects. This is an expensive production featuring marketable stars and a major director, but there is not much of a marketing push and it’s being released alongside No Time to Die and Dune. There’s no guarantee that this movie would be a hit under other circumstances, but even Kingdom of Heaven clocked $19 million on its first weekend. This movie is being sent out to die. So let’s not act like this is some mysterious aesthetic conundrum.
Yeah Marketing is a part of it. I’m definitely in this film’s target audience (and will probably see it soon) but I hadn’t heard single a word about it until it was released. And I’m pretty active on film/tv sites (like this one!) and I’m on social media way too much. They could have found me!
Depends on the movie. They seemed to put in some work to advertise Free Guy and that ended up doing pretty well in theaters.
Maybe change the name to something more familiar like “Last palace on the left” or “I spit on your luxurious mausoleum”Maybe animated with the queen having an emotional support dragon who’s snarky and has a love and collection of bad wigs. He teaches her to get past her emotional trauma and she teaches him to properly style his wigs so they don’t always catch on fire and compete in the first dragons drag ball.
Did you think an art house, true-story, period, costume tragedy about a rape was going to have lines around the block? If anything, the casting is a distraction – but I expect the movie will be great.
I’m not buying any disdain of the market or audience tastes when there’s still a global pandemic in play, and the movie-going business is nowhere near normalcy.
That sucks because it’s a good movie, but whatever man, the world is chaos
Maybe because the marketing did it 0 favors. I love Ridley Scott’s work and most of these actors, but never got more than a “meh” out of me when I’d see it
Bummer, I’m going to see it tonight.