Moonfall, the retro sci-fi catastrophe film crash-landed on the lower end of projections, bringing in only $10.1 million from 3,446 venues.
Those ticket sales are problematic because Moonfall cost $140 million to produce, making it one of the most expensive indie films in history.
Commercial sentiment may not help; moviegoers stuck the film with an unenthusiastic “C+” CinemaScore.
Unless the movie becomes a huge hit overseas, however, Moonfall likely will not become a financial success.
Emmerich, who made hits like “Independence Day,” and “The Day After Tomorrow,” was once the premier director of big-budget catastrophe.
But in the case of “Moonfall,” his movie is not offering the kind of escapism that pandemic-fatigued audiences are looking for
The old-fashioned saga, which stars Halle Berry, Patrick Wilson, John Bradley, Michael Peña and Donald Sutherland, centers on efforts to prevent the moon from colliding with Earth.
Lionsgate is only distributing the film, so the company will not absorb the entire loss.
Moonfall managed to place in second on the domestic box office charts. The movie narrowly beat Sony’s Spider-Man: No Way Home, which dropped to the No. 3 spot in its eighth weekend of release. The comic book adventure, led by Tom Holland, scraped together $9.6 million from 3,600 theaters, marking a scant 11% decline from its prior outing. After two months on the big screen, the latest Spidey story has grossed an eye-popping $748.9 million at the domestic box office.
