Alien: Covenant Box Office Performance

[fiveways]

What went wrong? Was the marketing focused too strongly towards fans rather than general audiences? Was word of mouth after the week-early European release a drag on the US performance?

Marketing was weird.  Most people I know who saw it had zero idea about "the crossing:.

they focus on alien and horror fans.  both are small fringe groups.

Dismissal of Prometheus pissed off people.

The bad reviews were shared more than the good ones.  About half the good reviews felt really force and by people who are more excited to see a movie early than actual reviews.

it's as poorly edited as prometheus but lacks ambition so it is more of a slog.

[Jonesy1974]

Between The Counselor, Steve Jobs, Assassin's Creed, and now Covenant, Fassbender has a pretty poor track record, box office wise, as a lead actor.

Well,The Counselor is an ensamble film and was sold as an ensamble film with bigger names than Fassbender. And nobody could have improved AC numbers. It's a VG film that appeals to a very niche audience and it didn't justify a high budget in the first place.
Re A:C: Prometheus didn't have "big names" either,and actually it's difficult for every actor to carry non-franchise movies by themselves,including RDJ,Chris Pratt,Evans, and all those who star in those Marvel monster hits. I think the days of the all star leading man doing are over. Actors don't draw much audiences these days. And,save for XMen,someone like Fassbender is mainly an arthouse kind of film actor.
Anyway,it doesn't make any sense to blame actors when a film like this underperforms. I'd say that Waterston  was the face of the marketing campaign among the actors,but it was evident how the big pull for this franchise - the xenomorphs - was put front and center. This wasn't marketed as a film with this or that actor.

The Counselor was an ensemble, but Fassbender played the title character and is in nearly every scene.  The other characters have significantly less screen time.

A big star like Leonardo DiCaprio or Brad Pitt definitely means something at the box office.  They guarantee a certain amount of interest.

I read a box office analyst say that there are some sort of indicators like audiences are turned off by Fassbender.  If you look at his recent movies, it's overwhelmingly clear that he is not a box office draw like DiCaprio or Pitt.

But my post was more about how Fassbender could be the reason that David stole the spotlight in Covenant.  He probably wasn't interested in versions where Shaw was too smart to reattach his head, for example.  Who would want to play a decapitated head for an entire movie?  In the end, they got a movie where Fassbender plays two roles, has all the best scenes and lines, the new female lead is someone he liked working with before, and he creates the xeno and the movie ends with him gloating over his victory.  C'mon.  It's almost like the script was written just for him, don't you think?  It certainly wasn't exactly what Ridley or Rapace wanted.  It's either Fox or Fassbender, but I don't think Fox would have bothered sending Fassbender a script they didn't intend to green light... unless they needed Fassbender to be onboard.  Either way, I think I have pretty good cause to single out Fassbender as the person with ultimate veto power over the script.  If Scott liked it, he'd show it to Fox, and if they liked it, he'd show it to Fassy and see if he was available.

To summarize, I'd say Fassbender did hurt the movie's box office by being unhappy with earlier versions of the script, causing delays and questionable changes to the story.  Combined with the possibility that Fassbender is a turnoff to mainstream audiences, I think there is a good chance he did hurt this movie.

Between The Counselor, Steve Jobs, Assassin's Creed, and now Covenant, Fassbender has a pretty poor track record, box office wise, as a lead actor. He also played games with his availability, making sure he was busy on another movie if he didn't like the current draft of Prometheus 2. When you read about the delays, Scott always wanted to go next wit his draft, and Noomi seems out of the loop, but Fassbinder kept saying "it's about finding the right story" and was constantly busy until the direction changed to being an Alien movie where Dave is the lead and creates the xenos. I know I'm reading between the lines, here, but I think Fassbinder deserves some blame, maybe a lot of the blame. He allegedly didn't get along with Rapace, and surprise she was replaced by an actress Fassbinder enjoyed working with on Steve Jobs. I think Fassbinder played games trying to make Covenant into what he wanted.

My friend, that's your theory.

Sir Ridley wanted bigger stars for PROMETHEUS.

For example: Leonardo DiCaprio was the first choice for David. Michael Fassbender was his second choice.

Didn't Brad Pitt briefly want to play David, as well?  I imagine he was the first or second choice before Fassbender, but no matter.

Regardless of how responsible Fassbender ultimately was, I think there is plenty of evidence to support the conclusion that Fassbender, not Scott or Fox or Rapace, is the person who rejected the first several drafts of the script.

Well, I think that's all bullsh*t.

Definatley. It's ridiculous to even suggest fassbender has that kind of power.

[OmegaZilla]

People, please avoid quoting long posts just to say a few words. You can erase some of the quote text and replace it with [...] for simplicity. Thanks

[fiveways]

Definatley. It's ridiculous to even suggest fassbender has that kind of power.

If Fassbender was a pro wrestler he'd be a upper-midcarder at best.  He's pretty much proven he's not enough of a draw to carry a film alone.

[Scott Conover]

The only way to get out of this mess if for the next film to be on a much smaller scale, possibly just taking place on the Covenant. And it would have to a budget like Arrival (47 million). If they start doing that, then they could have a sustainable movie franchise.

[Salt The Fries]

The only way to get out of this mess if for the next film to be on a much smaller scale, possibly just taking place on the Covenant. And it would have to a budget like Arrival (47 million). If they start doing that, then they could have a sustainable movie franchise.

No War of the Worlds then?

I'm not sure how many more movies will we get from this franchise btw...but I think the next one deserves all the money it can get!

[Scott Conover]

The only way to get out of this mess if for the next film to be on a much smaller scale, possibly just taking place on the Covenant. And it would have to a budget like Arrival (47 million). If they start doing that, then they could have a sustainable movie franchise.

No War of the Worlds then?

I'm not sure how many more movies will we get from this franchise btw...but I think the next one deserves all the money it can get!

Nah, That WILL NOT add any more money to this franchise. Covenant does not justify increasing the budget for future films.

[juxtapose]

i think we should all just stop freaking about how covenant is doing in north america. .was any of us seriously thinking it was going to do well in this specific teritory?. .it's a pity that all one seems to get when googling is how it's performing in the US. .like it's the only f**king country in the world. .i am frankly way more interested in the global numbers and particularly china and japan where it's yet to open. .so we don't have the full picture yet. .thus i think their is still plenty of hope. .and besides it's not flopping even in the us. .just under performing. .

[Gash]

Definatley. It's ridiculous to even suggest fassbender has that kind of power.

If Fassbender was a pro wrestler he'd be a upper-midcarder at best.  He's pretty much proven he's not enough of a draw to carry a film alone.

Good then. I prefer actors to stars.

[Jonesy1974]

Definatley. It's ridiculous to even suggest fassbender has that kind of power.

If Fassbender was a pro wrestler he'd be a upper-midcarder at best.  He's pretty much proven he's not enough of a draw to carry a film alone.

Exactly, no way he could have held fox to ransom and got rapace the boot. He's a wonderful actor though.

[SuicideDoors]

Was just revisiting the old box office prediction thread.  So much optimism. But the experts were right.

A lot of experts also predicted the extremely mixed word of mouth from Prometheus would detract from audience numbers too. It's clear as day it was social media reaction to Neil Blomkamp's Aliens sequel that set the internet on fire, not that Prometheus was lacking Aliens.

[harlequinade]

https://twitter.com/ERCboxoffice/status/868838168996462592

That's a mega drop.

[Xeno_from_Belgium]

$75-80 finally i think.
Less than Prometheus....

[FallenDarkAngel]

I think it can still make it up to $80M dometic and $200-220 M overall (domestic+WW) 

i think we should all just stop freaking about how covenant is doing in north america. .was any of us seriously thinking it was going to do well in this specific teritory?. .it's a pity that all one seems to get when googling is how it's performing in the US. .like it's the only f**king country in the world. .i am frankly way more interested in the global numbers and particularly china and japan where it's yet to open. .so we don't have the full picture yet. .thus i think their is still plenty of hope. .and besides it's not flopping even in the us. .just under performing. .

I just hope it'll still do well in Japan even though the release there will be 3 months late.

[A_Sexual_Tyrannosaurus]

Good. The movie was terrible. Franchise needs another rest after two crap films back to back. I don't want a third film to finish this garbage, at this point I no longer give a damn about where the aliens came from anymore. Thanks, Ridley.