It’s not every week that two big sci-fi Hollywood movies open in the same week, but that’s what happened this weekend with the Bruce Willis “Surrogates” and the Ben Foster/Dennis Quaid “Pandorum”. Unfortunately for sci-fi fans, neither film lived up to expectations, which is the nice way of saying they both stunk up the joint.
BoxOfficeMojo has Bruce Willis’ “Surrogates” opening at second place with $15 million, according to studio estimates. That’s well short of industry expectations, which had the film taking the top spot. Instead, “Surrogates” failed to dethrone last week’s box office champ, the CG animated movie “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs”, which handidly beat “Surrogates” by $10 million to maintain its dominance.
But as disappointing as Willis’ “Surrogates” was, it still did much better than Christian Alvart’s well-received (at least among sci-fi/genre fans) “Pandorum”, which failed to crack the Top 5 in its debut. The Ben Foster/Dennis Quaid starrer opened at sixth place with a meager $4.4 million. That, as the kids say, ain’t so good.
So what does this mean for future big-budget sci-fi at the box office? It’s definitely not a good sign. Combine the underperforming “Gamer” to the mix, and Hollywood suits may start believing there’s no room for big-budget sci-fi at the box office.
God, we almost lost to Jennifer Aniston's Love Happens. The horror, the horror.
