After Earth Fails at BO ; Director and Smiths Face Aftermath
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Sony's After Earth is on pace for a disappointing $27.3 million debut weekend. That’s way less than the high $30sM to low $40sM which Sony was predicting. AE really needs to step it up overseas now in order to make up for this lackluster debut.
While Will Smith should be able to bounce back, it will be difficult for director M. Night Shyamalan to shake off this failure.Shyamalan has been talking about sequels to Unbreakable and The Last Airbender in interviews while promoting After Earth, but it might be an uphill battle for him to get anything made at a major studio now.
AE will also hurt the budding career of Jaden Smith. Even a tweet from Jaden's pal Justin Bieber couldn't help After Earth:
The young actor better hope that The Karate Kid II happens soon. 2010's Karate Kid reboot--which featured J. Smith opposite Jackie Chan--earned a healthy $359 million globally.
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To be fair, Sony Pictures rarely has a big underperformer like this. And rightly or wrongly depending on how much you care about Jaden Smith and/or nepotism in Hollywood, the studio positioned the movie as a broad family film, building on Jaden’s stardom from the worldwide hit The Karate Kid and reaching out to young teens and families.
Even Will Smith's reputation and Sony’s marketing prowess couldn’t overcome this Shyamalan meltdown, yet another in his string of box office stinkers which have made audiences and critics alike completely soured on him.
I’m told that Will really wanted M Night to direct – even though this subject matter decidedly wasn’t in Shyamalan’s wheelhouse - and they together developed the script for a “not terribly expensive” movie. But a budget of at least $130M is hardly insignificant. Still, given the fact that Smith has made billions for Sony Pictures, the studio felt it just couldn’t say no to its most successful movie partner.
Now Smith and Sony must weather this very public failure. I’m told the studio worked “really hard” to fix this crapfest in post-production and that even an arrogant know-it-all like Shyamalan was aware the pic didn’t work but couldn’t fix it on his own.”You keep hoping people are going to be as good as their best work,” one insider told me about this all-too-familiar filmdom situation. “Sometimes some collaborations bring forth amazing results. And some are not meant to be.” Without a solid opening in North America and no chance for a strong summer multiple, pic will have to depend on overseas grosses.
Anyone seen the movie? Is it really that big of a mess? Ps. I guess M Night is now officially GONE (finally)
Sony did the right thing by not involving his name in the trailers and commercials but that still couldn't save the movie. Imagine how the movie would have done had his name been heavily involved in the promotions...
I personally also think The Village, besides from it's no so well developed ending, got enough genuine tension and atmosphere to build it as an unique film.
But after that, everything he created, especially The Happening and The Last Airbender, are pure cinematic trash....
I've seen it and it's beyond horrible. From the 15th minute you can go home because things will happen exactly as you'll expect.
The most representative review:
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* "Our hero also has a problem: he’s called Cypher, which in its alternate spelling of Cipher means either cryptographic code or arithmetical zero. Second problem: His character lives down to his name." — Richard Corliss, Time
Think I'm gonna see it sometime this week.
