Why The Fall Guy Flopped

WhatCulture

7 hours ago

Breaking down the year's most shocking box office flop!

Transcript

00:00Hey everyone, Ewan for War Culture here, and Summer Blockbuster season formally kicked off

00:04this past weekend with Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt's new action comedy The Fall Guy, which

00:10on paper had a hell of a lot going for it. From the sheer likability of its two leads,

00:16who are both fresh off colossal hits in Barbie and Oppenheimer respectively,

00:20to the clout of director David Leitch, who worked on Deadpool 2 and Bullet Train,

00:25and the film's strong reception from critics, they seemingly had every ingredient it needed to be

00:31a bona fide commercial smash. And so, alarm bells began ringing when The Fall Guy opened to a

00:38disappointing $28 million in North America, far below original projections, which placed the film

00:45as high as $40 million. This pretty brutal underperformance ultimately makes it nigh and

00:51impossible for The Fall Guy to turn a profit theatrically, unfortunately kicking the

00:56cinematic summer off with a bit of a flop and casting a bit of a dampener on things after the

01:01great vibes of films like Challenges, Love Life's Bleeding, Dune 2, and also the re-release of The

01:08Phantom Menace. We can't forget that either. But how did such a sure thing, seemingly, end up faltering

01:14so unexpectedly? Well, by considering every facet of The Fall Guy's creation and release,

01:20a clearer picture emerges of precisely what led it to fall flat at the box office.

01:25Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt aren't box office draws.

01:30Though Ryan Gosling and Emily Blunt are certainly popular actors, they're actually not box office

01:36draws in and of themselves, with neither actor having a single mega hit to their name that was

01:42marketed primarily on their star power alone. Even though the duo are fresh off the biggest hits

01:48of their careers in Barbie and Oppenheimer respectively, neither film was sold or made bank because

01:54of their name being attached. They're well known and liked obviously, but they aren't putting

01:59butts in seats the same way the stars of Yor did. Furthermore, both have their fair share of big budget

02:06and performances under their belt. Most prominently, Blade Runner 2049 and The Nice Guys for Gosling

02:13and Edge of Tomorrow for Blunt. So, The Fall Guys lackluster opening weekend isn't actually anything new for them.

02:21This is ultimately part of a much wider recent trend in Hollywood though, where contemporary audiences are

02:28considerably less swayed to see a film the strength of an A-list star, and are more about the franchises and IP,

02:35an issue we have both the studios to blame for, and also just shifting viewership habits.

02:42So, even with their singular charms and obvious chemistry, Gosling and Blunt were not enough to

02:49convince people to leave their house and buy a movie ticket on opening weekend.

02:54It's a reboot of an IP no one cared about. Ask the average person if they even know that The Fall

03:01Guy is based on an existing IP, and they'll probably look at you blankly, or just immediately think of

03:07the game Fall Guys instead, which, fair, that thing rocks. But indeed, the movie is based loosely on the

03:151980s Lee Majors starring TV series of the same name, yet when this branding is basically unknown to most

03:22people under the age of 40, does it in any way help the film from a commercial perspective?

03:29In an era where franchises are all the rage, and you generally need to be a recognisable IP

03:35to open big at the box office, rolling the dice on a 40 plus year old series that a large portion

03:41of the target audience has never heard of is... well, it's definitely a choice.

03:46And so, the utter lack of visibility for this film's source material did it no favours at all when

03:52it came to planting its flag in the perilous financial landscape of big budget cinema.

03:58And speaking of which, the budget is way too big. Last year it felt like something of a reckoning for

04:06irresponsibly budgeted movies at the box office, given the sheer number of colossally priced

04:1210 polls that underperformed or outright flopped. Looking at you, Indiana Jones and the Dial of

04:17Destiny. But even if you put an asterisk next to some of 2023's movies due to pandemic related cost

04:24increases, it doesn't seem like Hollywood is learning its lesson in 2024. The Fall Guys production budget

04:31has been estimated at anywhere from $125 million to $150 million, and even if we generously accept the

04:39lower number, the 2.5 rule dictates that it needs to go just north of $300 million worldwide to turn a

04:47profit. That's a high degree of exposure for an action comedy releasing in the current theatrical

04:54climate, and a figure which it now has no hope of reaching during its big screen run. Given the

05:01film's emphasis on practical stunt work, it truly feels like Universal should have been able to reduce

05:06the Fall Guys for considerably less than $125 million. Like how have we gone away from the days of the

05:12mid-tier budget action blockbuster from the 90s and early 2000s? We really need those again.

05:18$100 million or $80 million with some scaled down set pieces would have greatly less than the film's

05:24need to be a mega hit, but once again Hollywood egregiously overspent on a project while also

05:31overestimating the audience demand. Unremarkable marketing. Poor marketing has seen the commercial

05:38prospects of many a good movie, and while the Fall Guys trailers weren't awful, they were rather generic

05:45and blissless. Like you can't tell me you also didn't look at this thing and thought it was another

05:50inessential, overly CGI'd, irreverent action film that we've gotten way too many of since the beginning of

05:57the 2010s. By focusing on the broadest possible action comedy beats but being suspiciously vague

06:03about the plot, which is far more of a murder mystery than implied, the marketing didn't really

06:09cement this movie as a surefire must-see on the big screen. It didn't help that Universal also

06:15released the first trailer a whole six months prior to release, because as Argyle proved a few months ago,

06:22nothing sad as an audience's desire to see a movie quite like being subjected to the same trailer

06:28over and over and over again a month at a time. By the time audiences had been shown that Bon Jovi

06:35scored trailer for the Fall Guy a couple dozen times, they'd grown a bit tired of the whole idea and

06:41honestly, I can't blame them. It probably didn't help that the film ended up being delayed from March to

06:47May shortly after that first trailer dropped and so, in retrospect, Universal probably would've been

06:53smart to hold back their marketing push until the start of this year instead of the end of last.

06:59Also, if we've learned anything from the Bob and Heimer phenomenon from last year, it's that audiences

07:05will turn out if it's something essential or unique. Fall Guy looked like any generic straight

07:11streaming action movie you can find browsing aimlessly on Netflix or Prime, not a cinematic

07:18event that needed to be seen on the biggest screen possible. Universal's PVOD Strategy

07:25It's often said that since the pandemic massively reduced the theatrical window before new movies

07:31hit streaming, audiences have effectively been conditioned to wait for most films to land at home

07:36rather than heading out to see them themselves. And this is definitely the case with movies that

07:42don't have a hugely invigorating hook or simply look just okay. I mean why roll the dice on a bad

07:49night out of the movies when you can watch it considerably cheaper in the comfort of your own home

07:54mere weeks later. And Universal has been leading the charge in this regard with their aggressive

08:00premium VOD Strategy, where most of their movies which gross less than $50 million domestically

08:06in their opening weekend are sent to PVOD in just 18 days, while even those which go north of $50

08:12million will typically get there in just a month. And so, knowing that Universal will likely be sending

08:19the Fall Guy to streaming barely two weeks after it lands in cinemas, why deal with the hassle of

08:25splashing out on tickets, driving to the cinema, buying food and drink there and perhaps having to

08:31hire a babysitter for the night when you can just do none of that and watch it at home 18 days later?

08:38Like Warner Brothers and Disney did in the midst of the pandemic, it essentially kneecaps a movie's

08:43box office prospects before it's even premiered. The Bad Release Day. Look, it doesn't really matter

08:50how good a movie is if the release day is bad, and that's yet another area where the Fall Guy has suffered.

08:58While its original March 1st day would have seen it ill-advisedly go head to head with Dune Part 2,

09:04moving all the way to May didn't position it much better, considering the number of more

09:09highly anticipated blockbusters releasing throughout the rest of the month. From Kingdom of the Planet

09:14Apes to Furiosa, this consistent competition ensures there's really no path for the Fall Guy to enjoy

09:21a leggy steady box office run and keep bringing in the money weekend after weekend. Universal would have

09:27surely been better off releasing it in mid-March, where it could have been a few weeks removed from

09:32Dune Part 2, but its only major direct competition would have been Ghostbusters Frozen Empire,

09:37which ended up underperforming itself. Instead of that though, its ultimate release date has

09:42basically guaranteed that its box office legs will collapse in as little as a week, and it's got

09:48virtually no chance of staging an Elemental-esque comeback. And finally, audiences are tightening

09:55their belts. And finally, there's the unescapable fact that many people globally are struggling to

10:02deal with brutal inflation rates while not receiving wage increases to reflect this, as well as soaring

10:08utility bills. Life is pretty hard for a lot of people right now, and so, if you're only able to

10:14treat yourself to see maybe 3 or 4 movies at the cinema a year, are you really going to pick a

10:21merely decent-ish looking action comedy when you've got busier deep dish prospects like Dune Part 2,

10:27Deadpool, and Wolverine, and Furiosa to look forward to? And the Fall Guy is certainly no outlier in this

10:34regard. 2024 has been a hugely underwhelming year at the box office so far for smaller and bigger films

10:41alike, with even the ultra-reliable horror genre underperforming relative to expectations.

10:48It's a wider sign that Vassois and the general public don't have masses of disposable income

10:53right now, and certainly not to spend on something as fleeting and arguably overpriced as a cinema

11:00ticket, especially when you can save some dough and cash it at home in the very near future.

11:06With that all in mind, it'll certainly be interesting to see how some of the year's most anticipated upcoming

11:11blockbusters actually perform, but from where we're sitting currently, it doesn't seem like 2024

11:17is going to be a banner year for the industry, at least as far as box office books are concerned.

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