In 2018, the North American box office has had its share of high-profile bombs.
There was Solo, the worst-performing Star Wars movie in the history of Star Wars, and
Skyscraper, the millionth movie Dwayne Johnson's made this year.
But nothing even comes close to the disastrous performance of the Chinese film Asura.
Made with a reported budget of $113 million, Asura debuted to just $7.1 million, and before
the weekend was over, it had been pulled from theaters.
So, why did China's most expensive movie ever made bomb so hard at the box office?
What is Asura?
An adaptation of ancient Tibetan legends and Buddhist mythology, Asura follows a young
man who discovers he's destined to save a heavenly dimension, which is under attack
by a three-headed king named Asura.
Over the course of his journey, he discovers he's the reincarnation of one of Asura's heads,
which he'd lost 100 years ago during a previous invasion attempt.
Asura is about a hero's journey, one that was pitched as the start of a trilogy, but
it doesn't look like any sequels are coming anytime soon.
Sabotage
Asura's producers are accusing China's most prominent film review aggregating websites
of letting users tank the movie's rating with illegitimate reviews.
There are three sites in China that work as the equivalent of Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic.
Asura's early average score on one was an 8.4 out of 10, while the other two registered
at 4.9 and a 3.1.
What explains that discrepancy?
The people behind Asura are convinced that their movie is the victim of a focused, malicious
attack.
Specifically, the producers claim that they discovered a large number of 1 out of 10 scores
from suspicious-looking users which were posted immediately after the film hit theaters.
In an official statement, they have announced,
"Whoever is behind this is dirty, stupid and ridiculous."
Yanked from theaters
Rather than cut their losses and ride out the storm, Asura's filmmakers decided to snatch
their movie back out of theaters as quickly as possible.
Only a few other movies have gotten the hook in China.
In 2012, Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained was unexpectedly pulled from Chinese theaters
literally minutes after being released.
But that was only done for the sake of censorship, and Django returned to theaters in a matter
of weeks after edits were made.
Asura's situation is entirely different.
It was pulled by the film's own producers, for the drastic purposes of editing it to
somehow make it better.
But to appreciably raise the movie's quality through editing would likely take months,
as opposed to weeks.
World-class Effects
One of Asura's biggest attempted innovations is its larger-than-usual focus on special
effects.
This might seem unusual to American moviegoers, who are used to seeing state-of-the-art special
effects as a matter of course.
But in the past, Chinese-produced movies typically haven't had as much money pumped into them.
As a result, their special effects often looked embarrassingly cheap.
Asura aimed to break that mold.
It seems no expense was spared to bring the movie's effects to the standard set by American
movies.
That included hiring in-demand, award-winning Hollywood talent, including veterans of Deadpool,
Lord of the Rings, and Furious 7.
But while the money seems to have all ended up on screen, it doesn't appear to have been
a good investment.
Middling marketing
Another one of Asura's problems is the sort of thing that could strike any movie, anywhere:
a lack of effective marketing.
Despite six years' worth of development and build up, when it came time to actually sell
Asura to potential audiences, it looks like the ball got dropped at a critical moment.
At least, that's one claim that's been circulating, stemming from Chinese market analysts.
According to a representative of Beijing-based showbiz market research firm Fankink,
"Based on our tracking, prerelease market heat for this movie was quite low, below average."
Regardless of whether or not that's an accurate assessment of the situation, Asura now has
a reputation as a movie almost nobody wanted to see.
Untested director
What else could have gone wrong here?
For one thing, director Peng Zhang is an untested quantity.
Though he's been a stunt coordinator for many Hollywood productions, including Wonder Woman,
The Last Samurai, and Rush Hour 3, Asura is his first ever project as director.
Think about that for a second: What's purported to be the most expensive film ever made in
the history of China was directed by a person who had never directed a movie before in his
life.
We're not saying Asura's failure is Zhang's fault.
We're just pointing out that a first-time director seems like an incredibly strange
choice to head up such an expensive, high-stakes production.