Anti-Obama Movie #1 at Box Office, trumpeted the headline to a post on Fox Nation today. It was celebrating extremely high advance sales for 2016: Obama’s America, during its first weekend of general distribution. But if you read the fine print in the article in deadline.com from which Fox Nation’s post is taken, you’ll find they’ve stretched the truth a lot.
The film, co-directed by Dinesh D’Souza (who's been strutting his stuff on Fox News a number of times) and based on his 2010 hatchet job political commentary The Roots of Obama’s Rage, grossed about $1.2M-$1.7M Friday according to Deadline, doing better in advance sales than The Expendables 2. But that was Friday, and advance sales. By today there were enough people going to The Expendables 2 and The Bourne Legacy to push 2016 to #4 at Deadline.com. Rotten Tomatoes has it at #13, with $1.2M weekend gross compared to $28.6M for Expendables 2.
That is extremely good for a documentary. But will it last? Deadline doesn't think so. It attributes the film's initial success to "savvy marketing in advance of the Republican National Convention August 27-30. Exhibitors are reporting busloads of filmgoers arriving at theaters around the country in pre-organized trips. It also employed much of the same marketing techniques used to garner attention and support for faith-based films, understandable since the audience is overlapping.” In other words, once the conservative establishment stops aggressively propping the movie up, ticket sales will probably fall pretty fast.
Loads of commentary on the Fox Nation, and a little of it was about the movie.
But more of it, as usual, was about the subject.
Rotten Tomatoes gives the movie 57% based on 7 reviews, which is lower than The Dark Knight Rises but better than Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Sorry, your humble servant hasn't learned how to embed videos yet, but you can find the trailers at the Rotten Tomatoes link. If you're interested. I'm going to stay in and watch The Hunger Games tonight.
Per BOM, the film has actually been in release for 43 days (as of Friday’s business), and on Friday, the film basically doubled its box office take but, again, that’s after adding 900+ theaters. Through Thursday, the film (which had been playing in only 169 theaters) had earned $2.8 million. On Friday, after expanding to 1091 theaters, it took in $2.2 million. The truly interesting thing, though, is that BOM doesn’t begin reporting the film’s take until 8/13—its 32nd day of release—when it was playing in only 61 theaters (that day, it took in a little over $50,000, putting its gross-to-date at just over $586,000).
A couple of other facts, Friday’s per-theater average was only $2067 which is the film’s 4th largest per-theater average (last weekend, when it was only playing at 169 theaters, its per-theater average was $2643 on Friday the 17th, $2621 on Saturday the 18th, and $2102 on Sunday the 19th).
It should also be noted that the film company’s last major film (“Expelled”) actually opened in nearly as many theaters as “Hatchet Job” is currently playing (“Expelled” opened in 1052 theaters back in 2008).
Funny you should make this your closing line, because it’s a perfect example for what I was going to bring up: The “forced popularity” card.
I’ve read THG, and tried to see the movie; it’s even worse than Twilight, if you can believe that. I’ve also read Dinesh DâSouza’s work- he makes “The Undefeated” look like meticulous research.
So how do they survive? Pure manipulative bullying from the PR campaign. It’s #1 when it’s not, people are buzzing about it when they’re not, it’s tapped into some sort of social relevance when it isn’t, and (my personal fav) we have to believe that the actors created an end-all-be-all for playing the role that renders all future performances of the genre subject to comparison… even when someone who eluded the campaign thinks they flat sucked.
In more blunt terms: Everybody’s seen this movie but you, and we dare you to find someone who didn’t like it. Making you the outcast for speaking up if you’re the person who saw through them.
Fox is a master of this in all their divisions- I daresay they’re the best. Even Warner Brothers can’t quite silence critics with presumed isolation as well as they can. And that may be the only thing this movie really has going for it.
â¢âHis policy is financial confidence and food stamps.â
â¢âHe has spent trillions of dollars to rescue the moneyed interests and left workers and homeowners to their own devices.â
â¢âHe has delivered the politics of democracy to the rule of money.â
â¢âHe has disguised his surrender with an empty appeal to tax justice.â
â¢âHe has reduced justice to charity.â
â¢âHe has subordinated the broadening of economic and educational opportunity to the important but secondary issue of access to health care in the mistaken belief that he would be spared a fight.â
â¢âHe has evoked a politics of handholding, but no one changes the world without a struggle
