The Free Market Shrugged

[marmar]

This is from BoxOfficeMojo. Atlas Shrugged expanded to 166 more screens....and lost half its audience. The "invisible hand" has flipped the bird to good old Ayn.



This week Last Week Film Title Studio Weekend Gross % change Theater Count/Change Total Gross Budget Week #

18 14 Atlas Shrugged: Part I RM $879,000 -47.9% 465 +166 $1,890 $3,094,000 $20m 2


http://boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/

[LAGC]

1. Wow, I wonder if they'll even break even?

I heard it only cost $5 million to make in the first place, if they can't even re-coup that, then there very well might not be a Parts II and III, unless some rich capitalist patron steps in and funds the project.

[Bluenorthwest]

6. The last number in the string in the OP is the buget

It cost 20 million. The funniest thing about the entire project was that they actually called it 'Part One'. Fanciful thinking.

[ClassWarrior]

7. Who wants to spend $10-15 on only half a movie?!

Part One indeed!

NGU.

[n2doc]

8. I guess they thought it was Harry Potter.... n/t

[poverlay]

10. They didn't realize it was "Battlefield Earth", which at least was based on a good book! N/t

[trotsky]

2. LOL

Wish that could result in the Randoids realizing that their product sucks... but it won't. Instead, it's the fault of the government or the "librul media."

[closeupready]

3. Anybody who hasn't realized by now that Ayn Rand was mentally ill is not paying attention.

The garbage she wrote is unfit for kitty litter lining.

[Poll_Blind]

9. +1

So true.

PB

[nxylas]

4. Box Office Mojo's Randroid owner Brandon Gray is clearly upset

His report on the film is little more than a string of excuses for its failure. Naturally, it's all the fault of the evil librul media for implying that a film of a book revered by teabaggers is in some way political.

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/news/?id=3143&p=.htm

[regnaD kciN]

13. That article didn't strike me as written by a Randroid...

Also note that it was written after the opening weekend (not this past week) and basically labeled the film a financial flop, even as the producers were claiming initial returns showed it a success. I'm sure any comment today would be even less-optimistic.

[nxylas]

19. He's a Randroid

It shows through in his previous writings and the amount of coverage BOM has given to this movie, even if he's not as evangelical about it as BOM's erstwhile movie critic, Scott Holleran, who was once the subject of an article on the movie website CHUD entitled "What the fuck is wrong with Scott Holleran?"

[tabatha]

5. Good.

I loathe that book, and its philosophy. I'd like to see it pass its peak and slither down into the dustbin of history where it belongs.

[Javaman]

11. Next week will be even better. LOL

when it completely pancakes. an almost 50% drop is considered a pancake but I'm talking about, at this rate, is no box office take.

[Xenotime]

12. It's a stupid movie based on a bad book written by a no talent hack.

Go figure.

[cherokeeprogressive]

14. Sure gets a lot if attention on DU though...

Go figure.

[regnaD kciN]

15. It's called "know your enemy"...

[cherokeeprogressive]

16. So who's the enemy here? An inanimate object such as a book, a movie, or a strange dead woman?

It seems like a thousand years ago, in a different life, but I thought it was an interesting story when I read it. I was maybe 15. Haven't paid it much attention since.

I'll probably see the movie just out of curiosity, but not until it hits netflix.

[regnaD kciN]

18. Maybe "all of the above?" But, most importantly...

...the "philosophy" of which the book, and now the film, has been the primary popularizer for fifty-plus years.

[regnaD kciN]

17. Some interesting demographics...

According to the film's website, it is now in 465 theaters in 47 states (Delaware, Maine, and Vermont remain Rand-Free Zones ;-) ) and the District of Columbia. The largest number of theaters in a state is, to no one's surprise, 75 in California. Second, somewhat more surprisingly, is 41 in Florida, followed by 23 in Ohio.

I decided to do a little checking against state populations, and came up with the idea of comparing number of theaters with number of residents in the state. The figure I came up with was "Thousands of People per Theater" (TPT), with a lower number indicating a greater "market penetration" for the film.

Here are the top ten states with the lowest TPT, giving an idea of where the producers/distributors thought the demographic was most favorable:

Idaho 293.2
Montana 314.7
North Dakota 318.0
Utah 318.8
South Dakota 391.0
Nevada 416.0
Florida 441.2
Indiana 451.0
Tennessee 464.5
Colorado 475.3

No big surprises there -- these states are considered either "hard right" or leaning that way. Moreover, note how many states are in the "mountain west" -- the hotbed of "rugged individualism," and also the place where Rand has her capitalists create their anti-Shangri La.

By contrast, the states with the least favorable TPT (leaving aside the states where the movie isn't being shown at all) are:

New York 965.3
Pennsylvania 1,131.0
Virginia 1,273.8
New Hampshire 1,315.0
Arkansas 1,405.5
Connecticut 1,752.5
Maryland 1,872.0
New Mexico 1,955.0
Louisiana 2,144.0
Mississippi 2,911.0

This makes for an interesting mix -- several of these are "blue" states where Rand's philosophy would be unlikely to find much of an audience. However, some of the others are quite conservative, but also members of the "Bible Belt" -- where, one would assume, Rand's militant atheism would prove to be a serious turn-off.

In any event, what these figures show is that anyone who would claim that the film's failure is due to "liberal media bias" doesn't have much of a leg to stand on. In per capita terms, the film was targeted mainly toward states where the "individualism/capitalism" mantra would find a ready audience, and where the main national media source would likely be Faux Noise, which has (no surprise) been carrying the water for the producers of this film. In other words, this film was ideally targeted for its audience...and it still failed.