I agree that one of the fundamental problems that this film had is: who is its target audience? When a film version of DEH was announced, I immediately assumed it was an arthouse film, and the casting of Amy Adams and Julianne Moore, two extremely talented women who have no real box office pull among the general public, and in particular among teenagers, reinforced that. So I was surprised that the film went into wide release, and the film itself is apparently focused more on the teenagers.
For the adult audience attracted to this kind of film, bad reviews will kill the box office as happened here. That older adult audience is still reluctant to go to the theater during the pandemic. Films targeted to them continue to do poorly -- the Sopranos prequel completely flopped this weekend. And for whatever reason, not enough teens were interested; maybe they were all going to see Venom, which had the biggest pandemic opening yet this weekend. The second weekend overall drop for DEH of 68% is higher than they would have wanted, but in line with other films (In the Heights dropped 63%). The good word-of-mouth means it will do okay on home viewings, although still a money-loser. |
