Looks like the movie adaption of a musical named after a Def Leppard song is a box office bust – opening in the third spot behind Prometheus and Madagascar 3. With an estimated budget of $75 million, it only took in $15 million it’s opening weekend.
From Deadline Hollywood:
…New Line/Warner Bros’ Rock Of Ages (3,470 theaters) fell to earth with a thud. Which Hollywood expected because the pic had been tracking poorly for weeks (and even went down at one point week to week). The studio felt the 1980s period piece was a hard sell to younger moviegoers. I suspect the problem was casting. Russell Brand has been repellant to moviegoers, while Tom Cruise as iconic rocker proved just too incredulous for audiences. The PG-13 musical is looking to open to only $15M this weekend after taking in just $5.3M Friday and $5.4M Saturday. Given that the pic was based on the Broadway warbler, it did worse than the studio expected and far worse than Mamma Mia which with the same pedigree opened to $27M. Warner Bros was holding out hope for this $75M-budget pic, thinking that a good CinemaScore could generate great word of mouth and therefore great legs for the film. It didn’t materialize: audiences only gave Rock Of Ages a mediocre ‘B’. There’s just no way to save this s(t)inker with hack director Adam Shankman at the helm: in fact, weekend gross may fall below $15M by Monday.
I haven’t seen it myself, but the movie adaptation was going to have a hard time bringing in a large audience for a number of reasons. Few fans of 80s rock have any interest in hearing those songs butchered a la “Glee,” for one. Not to mention Tom Cruise is pretty much box office poison at this point due to his loony antics a few years back, and simply isn’t believable as a “rock god” – when I saw the trailer in a crowded theater last year, there was an audible groan from the audience as the camera whipped around to reveal Stacey Jaxx for the first time.