![will there be another after earth movie will there be another after earth movie](https://img.huffingtonpost.com/asset/5bb4a31b3c000032000cab5c.jpeg)
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. But even that 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. (The director lost me forever after the execrable The Happening…) 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. Will Smith’s residual mega-wattage was still strong enough to open the summer tentpole comfortably above $20M.
![will there be another after earth movie will there be another after earth movie](https://media.cnn.com/api/v1/images/stellar/prod/130524153900-summer-movie-after-earth.jpg)
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. On Friday, rival studios chortled its grosses were ”2.5 times worse than Jaden Smith’s Karate Kid reboot and half of Oblivion‘s opening” with Tom Cruise. Not hard to understand because reviews for the sci-fi newcomer were just plain awful: 13% positive on Rotten Tomatoes. To be fair, Sony Pictures rarely has a big underperformer like this. That’s way less than the high $30sM to low $40sM which Sony was predicting and which tracking showed was possible right into Friday. Directed by Louis Leterrier ( Clash Of The Titans), scripted by credited screenwriters Ed Solomon and Boaz Yakin & Edward Ricourt, and produced by Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci, and Bobby Cohen, it has an ensemble cast including Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson, Isla Fisher, Dave Franco, and Common with showy roles for vets Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman. It earned an ’A-’ CinemaScore which should help word of mouth stay strong.īut #3 After Earth earned only a ‘B’ CinemaScore which won’t help or hurt word of mouth.
![will there be another after earth movie will there be another after earth movie](https://acousticlive.com/February_2009_files/RMAD0Tim_170.gif)
“Older audiences attended the matinee performances, and the younger audience came out to our late shows,” an exec tells me. The studio notes that grosses were strong throughout Friday and into the evening which indicates a broad audience. (But it’s really a caper flick…) The film cost right around $75M with 2/3s mitigated by foreign sales since that’s the Lionsgate model. This pic is breaking the so-called ‘movies about magic’ curse. That overperforms the $20M which the studio was predicting. The magic-themed heist thriller amazingly overtook After Earth on Friday and stayed #2 all weekend, debuting with $27.5M for the weekend. Big online ticketseller Fandango first spotted the pic’s underperformance when After Earth ticket sales began lagging Lionsgate/Summit Entertainment’s Now You See Me (2,925 theaters) on Thursday for shows beginning at 9 PM. But the big story – or should I say, the sad story – is Sony Pictures/Columbia’s After Earth (3,401 theaters) starring Will Smith and his son and directed by the now unwatchable M Night Shyamalan. The domestic cume should reach a huge $170M through Sunday.
![will there be another after earth movie will there be another after earth movie](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/CZIt20emgLY/mqdefault.jpg)
SUNDAY 1:30 AM, 4TH UPDATE: Still clocking in at #1 is Universal’s Fast & Furious 6 (3,686 theaters) which easily dominated the field again with $34M this weekend.