In a post strikes-COVID theatrical landscape where everyone is still trying to figure out what works, along comes Paramount‘s $110 million reboot The Running Man starring affable star-on-the-rise Glen Powell hot off Top Gun Maverick ($1.49 billion global B.O.), Anyone But You ($220M global) and Twisters ($372M global), and it completely trips up in its U.S. ($17M) and global ($28.2M) opening. Running Man was completely blindsided by Lionsgate’s surprise No. 1 start of Now You See Me: Now You Don’t which did $21.3M domestic, and $75.5M worldwide.
From a distance, the third tentpole bet on Powell was in it to win it with Baby Driver filmmaker Edgar Wright attached to direct and re-co-adapt the Stephen King tome (penned under his Richard Bachman pseudonym) about a working man in a dystopian race who is pursued by assassins as he eyes a big-dollar lottery prize.
The more we dive deep into this, the more we hear that Running Man‘s fumbling at the B.O. stemmed largely from the administration change-over from the old guard to the new guard under David Ellison at Paramount. This is what happens often when there’s a change-up in a motion picture C-suite: They inherit a slate from previous management and they’re either into it, or they’re not, or they change up their end goals entirely. Greenlit under the former Brian Robbins-led Paramount, Running Man also suffered another blow when there was a shake-up in the motion picture marketing department with the exit of Global Distribution and Marketing Boss Marc Weinstock earlier this fall as the studio waited for the arrival of the new department head Josh Goldstine. Goldstine didn’t arrive until Oct. 15, a month before Running Man opened and during the interim, sources tell me there was a lot of limbo among marketing staffers particularly as Paramount was assessing job cuts. Read: No one knew whom to take their direction from, and they were waiting for Goldstine to get in place before the final leg of the campaign could be implemented.
Some tell me that the new Paramount Ellison leaders weren’t big fans of Running Man when they watched it. Goldstine, the former Warner Bros. marketing guru who steered the Burbank studio through a great path with day-and-date launches during project popcorn with Dune, among other pure theatrical hits like Dune 2 and The Batman, is known to pull rabbits out of his hat in the final laps of a marketing push. He pushed out another round of Running Man trailers that emphasized thematic elements and targeted varying demos. The simple conceit of the first trailer didn’t seem to be cutting it: The entire world against Powell’s Ben Richards.
The pic tested in the high 80% I hear, hence the push for a November holiday date. Running Man jumped around the month, initially versing Universal’s Wicked: For Good on Nov. 21, then moving to Nov. 7 against 20th Century Studios’ Predator: Badlands. Running Man finally landed on Nov. 14 aka ‘The James Bond date’ per distribution sources — a great place to launch in the pre-Thanksgiving period and an ideal date to grab Imax screens ($2.9M stateside, $4.2M global for the weekend).
Running Man‘s shoes were tied up upon arrival on tracking three weeks ago with a $20M projection; not ideal for a production of this size with hopes of being a franchise starter. In the end, I’m told that marketing dollars were cut, which can happen to any major studio release when the audience diagnostics aren’t looking right. Advance ticket sales on Tuesday took a downturn once reviews hit, critics dinging the Wright feature over its social satire. Running Man‘s reviews were better than Now You See Me 3, 64% fresh to 59% Rotten, and their CinemaScores the same at a B+.
What gives? Basically, there was more love for Lionsgate’s magician movie, and a wider, more female-dominated audience than the Powell sci-fi action movie (in PostTrak exits, Powell was the third reason why audiences went to see the movie after ‘looked fun and exiting’ and the sci-fi genre). And as we previously reported, Now You See Me 3 made more with a PG-13 rating than Running Man with its R. (Powell’s Twisters and Top Gun 2 were PG-13).
Says one person close to the production: “Running Man shouldn’t be seen as a referendum that Glen Powell can’t open a movie.” The actor, à la Ryan Reynolds, Tom Cruise, Dwayne Johnson, etc., is known for rolling his sleeves up in the post process, and completely pulling out the stops in the promotional tour; we’re told he’s an actor who truly cares about the ultimate outcome of his movies. It’s never over and done for Powell. Despite the low till on Running Man, Powell’s appeal to Middle America actually proved well with an even play for the feature across the country versus the coastal cities, which is where sci-fi generally pops.
One of the final bitter pills to swallow when it comes to Running Man running out of breath is that it’s another example of 1980s sci-fi IP reboot failing to connect post Tron Ares‘ recent off-gridding ($220M production cost, $141M global box office) and 2017’s Blade Runner 2049 ($278M global box office off a $150M-$185M production cost). All of this just casts a pall over any 1980s sci-fi cult revival occurring again with a hot star and hipster helmer; this despite the $1.1 billion-plus worldwide success of Denis Villeneuve’s Dune franchise; that original Frank Herbert source material bombing back under the direction of David Lynch in 1984 with $31.5M. The original Arnold Schwarzenegger Running Man movie in 1987 seemed to be a downturn for the booming action star with $38M domestic (unadjusted for inflation), following his then-biggest hit with that summer’s Predator ($59.7M domestic and $98.2M global). The bigger, more obvious question: Why remake Running Man if it wasn’t a hit to begin with?
“Only older males showed up this weekend,” said another source close to Running Man, emphasizing the title’s finite appeal with men over 25 repping close to half the audience.
So much for the reboots of Buckaroo Banzai and Krull.
