Well, by now most of you know that in it’s opening weekend the new Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johanson film The Island opened with a pathetic $12.4 million at the box office, finishing 4th in it’s opening weekend behind 2 other films in their 2nd week and 1 film in it’s 3rd.
The Island didn’t look like it was going to be a super blockbuster… but at the same time it looked like it had all the tools to at least to well. Great leads, a solid story and nothing else opening up against it other than the horrible Bad News Bears. It SHOULD have made $27-$33 million in it opening weekend… but it didn’t. The question is… WHY?
What kept people away from The Island? If you haven’t seen it… why did you not go? After all, it is a pretty decent film (see our review on The Video Edition Vol 2), it had big names and good looking action. What went wrong?
My only working theory right now is that the marketing sucked. It’s not that they didn’t market it enough… but the commercials and trailers could never seem to make up their mind if this was a deep thinking/moral dilemma film… or a summer action film. It had to real identity… and so the trailers just left most of us not really sure what it was we were looking at. Thus, not really being sure of what it was, it was difficult for anyone to get excited about it.
What do you think? What is your theory? Why did The Island bomb in it’s opening weekend?
