Geostorm failed to find sunny skies at the box office over its opening weekend, pulling
in just $13.3 million domestic against a reported budget of over $120 million.
The disaster thriller, starring Gerard Butler as a scientist tasked with fixing satellites
protecting the world from the catastrophic effects of climate change, was the latest
in a string of big-budget flops in 2017, knocked down by a rocky production and a chilly reception
from critics.
"It's worse than we thought."
"Yeah, I think we've established that."
Still, there's a lot more to what went wrong with Geostorm than just the obvious.
Here are the real reasons why Geostorm flopped at the box office.
Stormy skies
Geostorm took a long time to make its way to theaters.
The movie was initially sold to Warner Bros. in 2014, with a release date set for March
of 2016.
But then the release was bumped to October of 2016, then to January of 2017, and finally
its eventual October of 2017 release.
A lot happened in the interim to hurt Geostorm's chances of success, including some production
hurdles that drove up the cost—and generated bad word of mouth.
Sources say that debut director Dean Devlin's first cut was "unwatchable," and despite weeks
of post-production and numerous other test screenings, things didn't appear to get any
better.
"It's gotta be a glitch."
Devlin reportedly became overwhelmed with the movie's scale, and struggled to get it
ready on time.
So, with the director's blessing, the studio brought on mega-producer Jerry Bruckheimer
to oversee some $15 million in reshoots under director Danny Canon and screenwriter Laeta
Kalogridis.
The reshoots removed some characters, looking to better tie together the film's already
existing VFX sequences in a way that made sense.
Although reports say that the film tested much better after the edits, the added time
and cost and the bad press that came with it didn't help.
Been there, done that
Another problem with Geostorm is that disaster movies are hardly new.
In recent years, there've been a bevy of similar projects, like San Andreas and Deepwater Horizon,
to name a few.
And while some have seen success for being in on their own jokes, like the Sharknado
series, Geostorm was trying to be completely serious and faced stiffer competition as a
result.
Devlin himself help ed to crowd the field further when he set up the Independence Day
sequel Resurgence, the lackluster reception of which signified audience fatigue with disaster
movies—something Geostorm's disappointing performance seems to confirm.
Bad buzz
The audience's disinterest in turning out for Geostorm was reflected in the movie's
social media conversation.
Analysts noted that most of the conversation about the film online was negative, with viewers
comparing it to films like Armageddon and The Day After Tomorrow.
Audiences have been getting more discerning recently about reboots and remakes, and even
though Geostorm isn't officially based on a past property, the fact that the movie draws
so heavily on what's come before—without appearing to offer much that's new—was enough
to keep audiences at home.
The film was also largely maligned with critics.
The studio decided not to screen the film for reviewers and even held back on offering
Thursday night screenings to protect the movie's potential for a Friday night haul.
However, nothing could prevent the movie from eventually landing in the tough hands of critics,
who absolutely tore it apart.
Geostorm currently sits at a dismal 11 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics knocking
the movie for being "big, dumb and boring."
That certainly couldn't have helped draw in anyone who was on the fence about seeing it
in the first place.
Marketing mayhem
Marketing plays a huge part in the chances of a movie's success, but if Geostorm's PR
campaign telegraphed anything to viewers, it was the fact that the film was an absolute
mess.
This was mainly shown in the huge difference in tone between the film's first and second
trailers.
The first Geostorm trailer was a somber affair, beginning quiet and eerie before underlining
some terrifying and deadly climate-related events.
The second, though, was more akin to a disaster comedy, using the same clips but with much
more light-hearted music and some quips from Gerard Butler and his co-stars to make the
typhoons and earthquakes seem more like a fun romp than a catastrophic, world ending
event.
"I literally had to fly in from outer space."
A lot of this probably came about thanks to the movie's extensive reshoots, but the fact
that the two trailers were selling entirely different films wasn't a good sign for a potential
audience.
Too soon
Geostorm was also the victim of some pretty bad timing, arriving in theaters as the nation
was still reeling from the effects of three devastating hurricanes, as well as deadly
earthquakes in Mexico and catastrophic flooding around the globe.
With so much disaster happening in real life, it's easy to understand why audiences might
want to avoid seeing it on the big screen.
Geostorm's marketers recognized this, and pulled posters featuring the movie's old tagline,
"Brave the Storm," replacing them with a new tagline reading "Control the Weather, Control
the World."
However, that doesn't appear to have been enough, as the movie underperformed in regions
that had been hit by the hurricanes.
While there's some debate as to how much outside events affect a movie's box office performance,
the fact that so much of the movie's plot was reminiscent of real life tragedies likely
kept at least some viewers away.
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