Paramount Pictures’ Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves will more than likely be a flop despite its opening weekend bringing in more than original predictions. However, it’s big budget will likely keep it from making money.
Box office tracking website Box Office Pro predicted at the beginning of March, Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves would gross between $23 and $30 million in its opening weekend and go on to bring in between $52 and $90 million during its entire run at the domestic box office.
The film exceeded these predictions bringing in $38.5 million domestically and another $33 million internationally for a global gross of $71.5 million in its opening weekend.
Despite this, box office analyst OMB Reviews declares, “It is actually doing better than projected but because of a massive budget, I think right now it’s pretty easy to say the film will probably end up being a massive flop.”
He does hedge, “Even though, again, it is doing better than projected, and it is still early, it’s only been the first weekend, and the word of mouth is pretty strong for the movie. That being said, this type of start is not the kind of start you want to have when you have a budget of $150 million especially when you take into account the worldwide numbers.”
Later in the video he explains that competition with the upcoming The Super Mario Bros. Movie will significantly reduce the film’s chances of breaking even.
“You have Super Mario Bros. Movie coming out this weekend. You have it actually coming out early because of Easter and so you have it coming out, I believe on Wednesday, and actually it looks like you have Tuesday night opening nights for the film. So it comes out wide on Wednesday with Tuesday night early showings,” he explains.
He goes on to say the film “will be the ultimate Achilles’ heel for Dungeons & Dragons because even though the audiences are not exactly going to the same, there’s no denying that when the Super Mario Bros. comes out, guess what happens? That film takes all over the IMAX screens or the vast majority of them, all of the Dolby Cinema screens, all of the Big D films, all the CineBox. All of the major premium format screens are going to be going to Universal, are going to be going to Illumination, are going to be going to the Super Mario Bros. film.”
“And so that means it’s going to have to make a lot of headway in those regular 2D showings and those regular standard format screens,” he explained. “So does it have a chance? Technically, any film has a chance, but, again, the numbers are not trending high enough for me to think that the film has any chance of being able to hit its break even point because of the $150 million budget. And because of the marketing campaign for the film was not good.”
He continued, “People are, again, going to see the film and are surprised at how good it is. That is, again, a good thing because it mean you can make a little bit more money, more people go to see it, you have good word of mouth, but because you don’t have that initial push to really get it out there especially with the one chance you have to make the most money possible, which is your opening weekend. I just don’t see the possibility of it going forward.”
To that point, the film’s directors more than likely scared a significant portion of their audience away when they said they “love emasculating leading men.”
The directors, Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, discussed the actions scenes the film contains with the lead female characters being at the forefront and the men hanging in the back.
In response to this observation by Variety, Goldstein replied, “That was not an attempt at wokeness on our part.”
Daley also relayed, “Swear to God, it wasn’t. We liked that Holga is the bruiser that does the dirty work for Edgin, and he doesn’t like to get his hands dirty. We also love emasculating leading men.”
Goldstein would then double down saying, “Not for woke reasons!”
Daley added, “Just because it’s funny and fun and fresh. It was the dynamic we had with Rachel McAdams and Jason Bateman’s characters in Game Night.”
Goldstein added, “Or Tom Holland versus Robert Downey Jr. in Spider-Man. We like our male heroes to be challenged and not simply heroic.”
After a brief discussion about a couple of Hollywood actors not wanting to make themselves look weak, Daley concluded the discussion saying, ” What we love about Chris [Pine] is that he’s hyper-aware of that and wants to make himself look as bad as possible, almost to a fault. Sometimes we’re like, “All right, no, you have to be a hero in this moment.”
Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves received an A- CinemaScore. The film also received a 92% Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes with the film receiving a 4.5 out of 5 rating.
Despite the high CinemaScore and Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score, the film did receive a subpar 7.6 User Rating on IMDb from over 18,000 users. So the word of mouth might not be as good as one might expect if just looking at Rotten Tomatoes.
What do you make of the box office haul for Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves?