Last May, the summer movie season kicked off with David Leitch’s “The Fall Guy,” but it unfortunately underperformed with an $85 million domestic film. Its worldwide amount was around $165 million. All this with an announced budget of 150 million dollars.
That’s it for the sequel, which has already been written. “The Fall Guy” was made available on PVOD just three weeks after its theatrical release. They didn’t even wait to see if this one had legs. At this rate, Variety reports that the film is expected to lose $60 million upon its theatrical release. What I don’t understand are their numbers. It’s said the film needed $275-300 million to turn a profit – its theatrical release is all but over… doesn’t that mean its losses are well over $100 million?
So what gives? Why “Fall Guy” underperforming, even with a good 7.3/10 on IMDb and 90% positive on PostTrak? Deadline claimed the film might have been too “inside Hollywood” for audiences. “Why do young people want to see this film? » says a film trade finance source
A source told Deadline that Universal “should have spent like (Sony’s) Tom Rothman: make $80 million.” Why is Universal spending so much extra money? Instead of spending $220 million to $230 million between production and marketing costs, they could have done this for $160 million to $180 million,” the source added.
They are right. It was an ill-advised move on Universal’s part to greenlight this film with a budget in excess of $100 million, especially after Leitch’s last film, 2022’s “Bullet Train,” opened with $30 million. dollars and barely broke even.
Plus, did the general public even know that “The Fall Guy” was based on a TV show? There has barely been a lasting fan base for this series, but for some reason Universal decided to commit to a film version of it.
The main lesson from this latest Hollywood failure is actually quite simple: Studios know that there are fewer people buying movie tickets these days, so it should be very important to be responsible and do not exceed the budget. And yet we continue to see all these Hollywood films with astronomical costs associated with them. This trend will eventually have to end, and soon.
