a mediocre opening and now no chance of making any profit. I personally think this had the potential to open with more. Summit Entertainment screwed up the marketing. The ads were bland and uninteresting

I never expected it to open big. $35m OW tops in best case scenario. But I expected it would turn out a much more of a crowdpleaser as it had potential which could put it to ~$120m finish. As the reactions are mixed it won't have legs.

So OW I'd say nothing did go wrong really. It should still open to close to $30m which is fine. But the general reception of the movie went wrong and it won't have any legs. Also the budget should've been under $100m. About $75m I'd say.

I never saw a single trailer in theater. Only TV spots.

Actually, I think it opened up the higher side of the expectations.

1. A B+ Cinemascore considering a lot of hate from book fans is pretty solid.
2. a 25-30M opening always seemed to be where it was headed.

The reason it would be a fail in the US is the level of competition. This movie makes 70M no problem if it doesn't face Thor in week 2. It would be lucky to get that now. However, it wasn't grossly expensive by today's standards (110M), so a good international run could easily save it.

It probably cost much more than 110 million considering that they have tried to make the books into a movie more than 2 decades ago. Lots of directors and writers bailed on the project. There definately won't be a sequel.

The obvious problem with the advertising was the dearth of clarity and understandable conflict. Everything felt vague to a casual moviegoer unfamiliar with the novel, from the nature of the alien threat to why this one child is purportedly humanity's only hope to how exactly he fights the aliens.

It's about a boy saving humanity by not fighting, but playing a video game. It was destined to fail.

Many things are cool on paper for a teen audience but look shit on screen for everyone else.

the book is great and far superior to most books targeted and young people today (like The Hunger Games or Divergent). Too bad most young people of today have never read it

That kind of tells you something.

Bad marketing.

We all saw what great marketing can do for a good book in Gatsby. Though that also had the huge Leo boost.

This should've been a $40+ mil opener.

There was that, but then there was the substantial hate campaign covertly mounted against the author too. It was blindly joined by many witless sycophants who were unable to discern how they were being manipulated and for what purpose.

I agree with you on all points, except that I don't believe that whole kerfuffle played much of a role in the film's mediocre opening. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the general moviegoing public was largely unaware of the Orson Scott Card controversy - that they didn't see the film because they weren't interested, not because they were offended by Card.

My theory in short: The "controversy" fizzled among the general public just as much as the film itself did.

And for those of you who never saw the trailer in the theater - it was the complete opposite for me. Through most of the summer and into the fall, I practically couldn't escape that trailer - and it looked blander and blander every time I saw it.

It's a shit movie that very few people care about. End of.

so bad movies can't make money? And anyway nobody is saying Ender's Game should have been an Inception level hit I just believe it had the potential to have been a higher grosser.


also, Ender's Game wasn't a bad movie. Not a great one but not bad at all

No, they can make money, but not if very few people care about them.

This steaming pile of horse shit opens in China on Tuesday. It might save it some face when looking at its worldwide total, although I doubt it.

You should see it. You might like it.

I'll watch it, for sure. Nothing else to watch at the moment.

The quality question aside - the movie has done downright embarrassing numbers overseas. And no one gives a shit about the "controversy" about its author overseas, the audiences just didn't care to see it.

Thor and Catching Fire completely killed it, but even if they didn't it wouldn't have done more than a typical 30/ 70-80 kind of grosser. It just didn't look more appealing than other films.

Though it came out the same year as 47/ Ronin so in the scope of things,

Though as I said, its domestic performance wasn't good, but overseas, it's kinda normal that even if an effects-heavy sci-fi flicks bombs doemstically, it still easily does $100 million overseas. So far, this hasn't even made $50 million...

I think it's because it looked too kiddie and too serious at the same time. If you know what I mean.

Agree with Lecter on its OS performance....total embarrassment. It was chucked out here in just 2 weeks from majority of theaters, kinda rare for a wide release.

looked like a non-event and the movie was pretty lame.