‘Poseidon’ Flounders on Its 1st Weekend

“Poseidon” tanked at the weekend box office, becoming the second big-budget movie of the early summer season to fall shy of expectations.

Paramount Pictures’ “Mission: Impossible III,” which disappointed in its opening a week earlier, held the top spot by grossing $24.5 million in the U.S. and Canada, compared with $20.3 million for the Warner Bros. Pictures remake of Irwin Allen’s 1972 disaster epic “The Poseidon Adventure.”

“Poseidon” director Wolfgang Petersen had scored three straight box-office hits including the seafaring adventure “The Perfect Storm” in 2000, and other disaster movies such as 2004’s “The Day After Tomorrow” have packed theaters in recent years. But “Poseidon” received tepid reviews from critics who called it visually stunning but emotionally uninvolving.

The movie was co-financed by equity investment firm Virtual Studios, but Warner Bros. could face a sizable loss if the movie flops. Studio insiders say “Poseidon” cost more than $150 million to produce; other sources claim the budget ran closer to $180 million.

Warner executives acknowledged they were displeased with the opening results at 3,555 theaters, but said it was too soon to pronounce the film a failure, especially considering its “outstanding” start in limited overseas release.

“While we had hopes for a stronger opening in the U.S., it’s premature to assess the financial viability of the film,” said Dan Fellman, domestic distribution chief at Warner Bros. “It’s going to take several weeks to see how well viewers respond to the film.”

“Poseidon” was No. 1 in four of the six Asian countries where it was released, grossing $4.4 million from 729 theaters, said Veronika Kwan-Rubinek, head of international distribution at Warner Bros.

That bodes well for the scheduled rollout of the movie to a total of 130 countries over the next two months, she said.

Movies set on water are notoriously expensive, but Petersen has a reputation as a kind of king of the sea. He made his name in 1981 with the classic German submarine thriller “Das Boot,” and 19 years later “The Perfect Storm” rang up $333 million in worldwide ticket sales.

His other hits during the last decade included 1997’s “Air Force One” and 2004’s “Troy.”

More of the budget for “Poseidon” was spent on its lavish special effects than on the cast, which includes Kurt Russell, Josh Lucas, Emmy Rossum and Richard Dreyfuss, studio executives said.

But impressive effects are nothing new to today’s audiences, and the ensemble cast failed to pull in big crowds.

And unlike the original film, which came at the forefront of a string of disaster blockbusters in the 1970s, including “Earthquake” and “The Towering Inferno,” this time around the “Poseidon” story offers little novelty, even for younger audiences. “Poseidon” enters the market well into a second wave of disaster movies that started in the mid-1990s with the likes of “Twister,” “Titanic” and “Deep Impact.”

Warner Bros. shared the financial risk by partnering with Virtual Studios, the firm headed by veteran investment banker Benjamin Waisbren, as part of a six-project slate. Studios increasingly have turned to such equity partners as production costs have spiraled higher in recent years, but the results have been mixed.

The first film to be released in the Warner Bros.-Virtual Studios venture was this spring’s “V for Vendetta,” which fared poorly at the box office despite generally favorable reviews.

“Mission: Impossible III,” the spy thriller starring Tom Cruise, fell 49% from its opening weekend, compared with second-weekend drops of about 53% for the first two films in the series.

Although the movie has not done as well domestically as Paramount had hoped, its overseas business has been robust. The film’s worldwide gross reached $213.8 million, with 60% of the total coming from outside the U.S. and Canada.

Among other new releases, 20th Century Fox’s “Just My Luck” grossed $5.5 million at 2,541 theaters in the U.S. and Canada to place No. 4. The romantic comedy starring Lindsay Lohan fared well with young females, as expected, but it had the lowest opening weekend among Lohan’s six films, industry tracker Nielsen EDI said.

Buena Vista’s soccer underdog story, “Goal! The Dream Begins,” featuring Mexican television star Kuno Becker, came in at No. 12 with $2 million from a relatively modest 1,007 theaters.

This weekend’s estimated $96-million overall tally in the U.S. and Canada would snap a string of 22 straight weekends with more than $100 million in ticket sales as the industry seeks to rebound from its 2005 slump, Nielsen EDI said. If estimates hold up, it also would be the first weekend since mid-March to lag behind the comparable period in 2005.

From Jan. 1 through the weekend, overall ticket sales rose to an estimated $2.87 billion, up 5% from 2005, Nielsen said.

Final figures are being released today by the studios.

Looking ahead, the industry is awaiting a trio of potential hits over the next two weeks.

“The Da Vinci Code,” the theological thriller based on Dan Brown’s wildly popular novel, and the animated family comedy “Over the Hedge” come out this week, followed next week by the superhero sequel “X-Men: The Last Stand.”

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Box office

Preliminary results (in millions) in the U.S. and Canada based on studio projections.

*--* Movie 3-day gross Total Mission: Impossible III $24.5 $84.6

Poseidon 20.3 20.3

RV 9.5 42.8

Just My Luck 5.5 5.5

An American Haunting 3.7 10.9

United 93 3.6 25.6

Stick It 3.2 22.2

Ice Age: The Meltdown 3.0 187.4

Silent Hill 2.2 44.5

Hoot 2.1 6.2 Source: Exhibitor Relations Co. Los Angeles Times

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