Disney’s ‘Tomorrowland‘ may be the worst box office movie since Johnny Depp‘s ‘Lone Ranger’.
In 2008, Walt Disney Pictures was developing a feature film called Tomorrowland with screenwriters Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, to star Dwayne Johnson. The film was supposedly not based on the actual Tomorrowland attractions, and was an original story which borrowed the title.
In 2013, Walt Disney Pictures announced that a secret project (originally titled as 1952) led by director Brad Bird and screenwriter Damon Lindelof was re-titled ‘Tomorrowland’. George Clooney, Britt Robertson, Raffey Cassidy and Hugh Laurie star in this film, which was released on May 22, 2015.
‘Tomorrowland’ tells the story of a former boy genius and a teenage girl, who travel to an ambiguous dimension known as “Tomorrowland”, where their actions directly affect the world and themselves.
‘Tomorrowland’ has received mixed reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 50%. The site’s consensus reads, “Ambitious and visually stunning, Tomorrowland is unfortunately weighted down by uneven storytelling.”
On Metacritic, the film has a score of 60 out of 100, based on 47 critics, indicating “mixed or average reviews”. ‘Tomorrowland’ has made $76.4 million in North America and $93.5 million in other countries for a worldwide total of $169.9 million, against a budget of $190 million.
However, The Hollywood Reporter estimated that the film cost $330 million to produce and market, and noted that the financial losses by Disney could finish anywhere between $120 to $140 million by the time the film ends its global theatrical run. According to them, Tomorrowland is the third big-budget original film of 2015 to bomb in the box office, following ‘Jupiter Ascending‘ and ‘Seventh Son‘.
So it begs the question? Is George Clooney bad luck or does he just suck? In an article by the NYPost, reporters pointed out that whenever George Clooney doesn’t sell movie tickets.
The failure of this supposed tentpole release is yet another sign that Clooney, who has been headlining movies for 19 years, just doesn’t sell tickets. If his movies took in a dollar’s profit for every magazine cover and breathless infotainment tidbit on him, they’d earn more money than they actually do at the box office.
Clooney isn’t even a movie star. He’s just a guy who keeps getting highly paid to make movies nobody wants to see.
What do you think? Is George Clooney’s movie making career over?
Discuss this story with fellow Project Casting fans on Facebook. On Twitter, follow us at @projectcasting.