Yet another major film is going to bomb spectacularly at the box office, and this time it wasn’t distributed by Paramount, who became something of a bomb factory in recent years. I’m actually talking about the critically panned King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, which opened to a disastrous $5.3 million across 3,702 US theaters on Friday. With a gigantic $175 million production budget, the total US gross currently sits at just $14,700,000.
And King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is also not performing better overseas, having earned a total of $29,100,000 from international territories, which brings its overall combined worldwide gross to $43 million. It has yet to open in the UK, Japan, Australia, Brazil and New Zealand, but if the early numbers are any indication, this is going to be a major financial failure. It’s too early at this point to tell how much money distributor Warner Brothers will lose from the film, but it’s safe to say that it will be a significant amount. Clearly, nobody hailed to the king.
Directed by Guy Ritchie, and starring Charlie Hunnam, Àstrid Bergès-Frisbey, Djimon Hounsou, Jude Law and Aidan Gillen, King Arthur: Legend of the Sword attempted to reinvent the popular myth for a modern audience. And I guess it failed. In addition to the abysmal reviews, other reasons why the film failed to connect with audiences include the lack of any bankable stars, competition from other major releases including Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and The Fate of the Furious, and the fact that it didn’t belong to an already popular pre-existing franchise.
Warner Brothers had originally planned for King Arthur: Legend of the Sword to be the first in a series of six movies, which now seems laughable. I expect that the studio won’t be spending too long in the doldrums over the fact that the movie bombed, however. After all, they’ve got a metric ton of upcoming DC Cinematic Universe and Fantastic Beasts movies set to rake in the cash in the near future.
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