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Four Reasons Will Smith And Ang Lee’s ‘Gemini Man’ Was A Box Office Disaster

This article is more than 4 years old.

Ang Lee and Will Smith’s Gemini Man, an ambitious, original but poorly reviewed sci-fi flick, opened with just $20.5 million in domestic box office this weekend. It hasn’t performed much better overseas, where it has earned $59 million worldwide after opening in around 85% of its eventual foreign markets. Yes, China is set to go on Monday, but the $30 million that Ang Lee’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk earned in China three years ago isn’t going to cut it here. Moreover, Hollywood productions, even co-productions like Abominable, have struggled in China this year outside of the superhero genre (and Hobbs & Shaw). Barring a miracle, the $138 million Paramount/Skydance/Alibaba/Fosun production is going to be a relative box office disaster. What went wrong? Well…

The reviews were poor.

This one is self-explanatory. As much as folks like me constantly rant about moviegoers claiming to want original, grown-up, star-driven studio releases, it’s never an easy thing to say that “Okay, this movie is bad, but see it anyway.” Ang Lee’s Gemini Man is a pretty run-of-the-mill (and awkwardly written) action flick that is only “must see” in the sense that it looks spectacular in its unique-unto-itself 120 frames-per-second/3-D format. And yes, if you’re someone who wants to experience something new and different at the movies, Gemini Man is worth it. With the caveat that I have yet to sample it in conventional 24 fps 2-D, Gemini Man wasn’t a very good movie and had little to offer beyond technology and “Will Smith versus Will Smith.”

Will Smith needs a franchise to open a movie.

Will Smith is now a “regular” movie star. Like almost other movie star today, save for Leonardo DiCaprio and (at a price) Kevin Hart, he is a high-level added value element for an already viable IP/franchise/brand pitch. Cast him as Deadshot in Suicide Squad or as Genie in Aladdin, and he’s worth his weight in gold. Ditto a “don’t need to leave the couch to watch it” Netflix movie like Bright. But the “star+concept” packages that once defined Hollywood are now (unless the budget is low enough) bad business. Gemini Man joins Focus (which earned $150 million global on a $50 million budget), Collateral Beauty, After Earth and Concussion as wholly original star vehicles that couldn’t pull their weight in a branded/IP theatrical world.

The narrative was that it wasn’t worth seeing outside of the technology.

It’s neat/noteworthy that Ang Lee chose to both make a movie starring a CGI double of “young Will Smith” and shoot that movie in the ultra-detailed (and thus visually unforgiving) 120 fps. However, conversations about how the movie was made dominated the media coverage, overshadowing what the movie had to offer in terms of meat-and-potatoes entertainment. With the caveat that the reviews for the movie were lousy, folks either were turned off by the high-frame-rate (perhaps they got burned by the first Hobbit prequel), had no interest in 3-D or were unable to find a nearby theater playing it at a high frame rate. Like The Walk in IMAX, the story behind Gemini Man was that you shouldn’t bother if you can’t/won’t see it as intended.

Joker and Addams Family were brutal competition.

Like Gravity, The LEGO Movie and Black Panther before it, Joker has become one of those movies that’s hit it big in such a way that it actively hurts the competition. Joker especially is a “problem” in that it is serving as a triple threat, acting as the big tentpole movie, the big adult movie and the big horror movie of the season. And for those who wanted a kid-sized franchise/horror movie, well, that’s The Addams Family. Since Joker and Addams Family got better reviews anyway, Gemini Man was only the “must-see movie” of the moment for those too young for the R-rated drama, those explicitly interested in how the movie looked and felt and die-hard Will Smith fans.

Why Gemini Man’s failure is such a missed opportunity.

Maybe if the film had worked better as a movie, Joker had been less of an all-purpose event, the movie star+high concept formula was still viable, and/or audiences weren’t either scared off by the high frame rate or chose to give up when unable to find a participating theater near them, Gemini Man might have survived. The tragedy is that, like Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway’s Serenity, the bells and whistles of Gemini Man may have both sabotaged the movie and jeopardized the industry. There are fewer and fewer moviegoers who will show up for a star-driven, original, adult-skewing studio programmer. When the few of those get thrown off by ridiculous plots (Serenity) or divisive visuals (Gemini Man), those moviegoers are likely to just stay home next time.

Your move, Avatar 2, but that’s a conversation for another time.

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