Despite extremely positive first reactions, it looks as if Gareth Edwards' The Creator will go down as a cautionary tale- a film that studio execs will point to as justification for an endless stream of sequels and IP-based adaptations.
The film currently sits at $79 million worldwide and carries an estimated production budget of $86 million.
While it may look close to breaking even, when you factor in marketing costs and revenue splits with theaters, the film needs to gross almost double what it's made so far in order to truly account for all of its upfront costs.
This past weekend, the film grossed $4.3 million in North America and $5.9 million internationally for a $10.2 million worldwide gross.
Don't expect a staggered international rollout to boost the film's box office tally either, as the only territory yet to release the film is Japan, where it opens on October 20.
The fear now is that with The Creator looking like a flop and recent sci-fi concepts like Adam Driver's 65, Halle Berry's Moonfall, Brad Pitt's Ad Astra (2019) also flopping, studios might be skittish on big-budget original sci-fi concepts for quite some time.
Original sci-fi films might soon be limited to indie budgets in the range of A24's Everything Everywhere All at Once, which cost less than $25 million to produce.
The movie had a strong 76% Rotten Tomatoes score when it was first released at the end of September, but that number has subsequently dropped to 67%. The audience's performance is likewise not great, with only a 76% rating from more than 1,000 contributions.
Currently, the main topic of conversation online is whether John David Washington is leading man material or better suited for supporting roles. An argument that's gaining a lot of steam is that a bigger-name actor would have drawn a larger audience.
Edwards (Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Godzilla) directed the film and co-wrote the script alongside Chris Weitz (The Golden Compass, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story). Legendary award-winning composer Hans Zimmer (The Dark Knight, Man of Steel, Dunkirk) handled the score.
The cast includes John David Washington as Joshua, Gemma Chan as Maya, Ken Watanabe as Harun, Sturgill Simpson as Shipley, Madeleine Yuna Voyles as Alfie, and Allison Janney as Howell.
Amid a future war between the human race and the forces of artificial intelligence, Joshua, a hardened ex-special forces agent grieving the disappearance of his wife, is recruited to hunt down and kill the Creator, the elusive architect of advanced AI who has developed a mysterious weapon with the power to end the war—and mankind itself.