A disaster movie released earlier this year has found itself on an unenviable list after becoming one of the biggest Box Office flops of all time.
Despite being directed by Roland Emmerich – dubbed the ‘Master of Disaster’ due to his long list of successful disaster movies – the movie seemingly failed to interest audiences following its release last month.
Moonfall, which stars Patrick Wilson and Halle Berry, had an impressive budget of $140 million (£106,806,700), but took just $10 million (£7,629,050) on its opening weekend – compare that to Spider-Man: No Way Home, which pulled in $587.2 million (£447,977,816) during its opening weekend and you can see just how much of a disaster this disaster movie really is.
To date, Moonfall has made just $39.2 million (£29,905,876) at the global box office. Again, for a fuller picture, you can compare this to Spider-Man: No Way Home which took more than $1.8 billion (£1,373,229,000) worldwide.
As a result, Moonfall has found itself on a list of famous Hollywood flops, which includes the brilliantly titled Mars Needs Moms – which cost a whopping $150 million (£114,378,750) and, in a strange coincidence, made just $39.2 million – and Eddie Murphy movie The Adventures of Pluto Nash, which had a budget of $100 million (£76,252,500) and took $7.1 million (£5,413,643).
What’s more, the $140 million budget doesn’t include the money spent on marketing Moonfall, which could have run into the tens of thousands, meaning the loss could be even greater.
On the flip side, as the movie was only released in February the total takings don’t include money from DVD, Blu-Ray or potential streaming downloads, but even with those included it's unlikely to make much of a dent in the $140m-plus that’s been spent.
In case, like most of the population, you haven’t seen Moonfall, it centres on former NASA astronaut Brian Harper (played by Wilson) and NASA official Jo Fowler (Berry) taking on a potentially deadly mission to save the world after the moon falls out of orbit and starts to cause all kinds of problems for us left back on Earth.
Emmerich has a sting of disaster movie successes to his name, including The Day After Tomorrow and Independence Day, but even his good name and solid experience seemingly wasn't enough to draw in crowds at the cinema.
In an interview with Screen Rant prior to the film’s release, Emmerich said he was open to the idea of a sequel – although I reckon it’s fair to assume that’s been shelved for the time being.
He said: “I mean, if the movie is successful, we'll do a sequel or two sequels. It was always imagined as a trilogy.”
