Pricey ‘King Arthur’ Is a Box Office Pauper

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/14/movies/pricey-king-arthur-is-a-box-office-pauper.html

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LOS ANGELES — Knights on horseback trotting down Hollywood Boulevard. Billboards, bus ads, banners at malls, a barrage of TV ads. Fast-food tie-ins. An online game and a Snapchat stunt. Three trailers.

So many advertising ploys, and yet none of them could save “King Arthur: Legend of the Sword” from becoming the first colossal fail of the summer movie season and a hall-of-fame misfire for Warner Bros. The poorly reviewed film — costing roughly $300 million to make and market worldwide — took in about $14.7 million at North American theaters over the weekend.

“King Arthur,” directed by Guy Ritchie and envisioned by Warner as the beginning of a multiple-film series, managed only $29.1 million overseas, where it played on about 18,000 screens in 51 countries.

“I’m really disappointed,” Jeff Goldstein, Warner’s president of domestic distribution, said by phone on Sunday. “We had higher hopes.” He declined to comment further.

When audiences reject a studio movie on this scale, it usually means the entire concept was flawed. The senior Warner executives who made a group decision to produce “King Arthur” saw a chance to put a “Game of Thrones” spin on a well-worn medieval story. But it proved a massive miscalculation: Younger audiences in particular showed very little interest, even with Mr. Ritchie (“Sherlock Holmes”) in the director’s chair.

Questions about the effectiveness of Warner’s marketing machine also circulated in Hollywood over the weekend.

As recently as last summer, when shoddily made films like “Suicide Squad” arrived on the Warner assembly line, Warner marketers were able to save the box office day with their signature maneuver: a big, bombastic, back-up-the-Brink’s-trucks advertising campaign. But consumers seem to be pushing back, ignoring blanket marketing and instead placing enormous emphasis on review-aggregation sites like Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic.

In the last six months, Warner has found substantial hits in “Kong: Skull Island” and “The Lego Batman Movie.” But in that same period, Warner has been unable to “open” midmarket movies like “Unforgettable,” “CHIPS,” “Live by Night,” “Collateral Beauty” and “Fist Fight.” And now comes a disastrous debut for the lavishly budgeted “King Arthur.”

To some extent, “King Arthur,” starring Charlie Hunnam, was never able to recover from a marketing moment last July, when Warner showed underwhelming footage at the Comic-Con International fan convention. In the social media age, bad buzz spreads in a flash. Warner also moved the release date for “King Arthur” three times, in part to give Mr. Ritchie time to rework it, which was widely reported by blogs and added to the stink.

Warner ultimately decided to release “King Arthur” in the shadow of what was always expected to be a box office monster, “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.” That Disney-Marvel sequel was again a huge No. 1 over the weekend, taking in $63 million, for a two-week domestic total of $246.2 million, according to comScore, which compiles box office data.

As Warner braces for new corporate oversight — AT&T is expected to win regulatory approval in the coming months for its $85 billion takeover of its parent, Time Warner — the studio has taken steps to improve film quality. In December, Warner’s top production executive, Greg Silverman, was pushed out. His successor, Toby Emmerich, last week made more staffing changes, including wooing back a former Warner executive, Kevin McCormick, a veteran of a more gold-plated era at the studio.

In the near term, the failure of “King Arthur” heightens pressure on the coming Warner film “Wonder Woman,” which Hollywood and Wall Street analysts already viewed as a make-or-break release. If successful, that big-budget film, scheduled to arrive on June 2, could offset “King Arthur” losses and show that Warner has put its superhero operation back on track. (“King Arthur” was financed in part by Village Roadshow.)

Warner also has high hopes for Christopher Nolan’s “Dunkirk,” set for release on July 21, and the horror film “Annabelle: Creation,” which is scheduled for Aug. 11.

As for Mr. Ritchie, he has now suffered two bombs in a row, putting him in a perilous career spot. “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.,” written and directed by Mr. Ritchie, cost at least $150 million to make and market and took in $110 million worldwide in 2015. His recent track record throws a shadow over his next costly project: Walt Disney Studios has hired him to make a live-action version of “Aladdin.”

For the weekend, the Amy Schumer-Goldie Hawn comedy “Snatched” (20th Century Fox) was a neither-here-nor-there second, collecting about $17.5 million; it was produced by Fox and Chernin Entertainment for roughly $42 million. “King Arthur” was third.