Anthony Hopkins, Al Pacino Movie Makes Just $141 at British Box Office
LONDON — Take two Oscar-winning actors, add five movie theaters, multiply by a boatload of negative reviews, and what do you get? An opening weekend of $141.
Yes, $141. Over three days. That’s all that Misconduct, a legal thriller starring two of the most acclaimed actors alive today — Al Pacino and Anthony Hopkins — managed to rake in at the box office in Britain over the weekend, according to figures released by Rentrak Tuesday.
The movie was shown at only five locations in Britain, in theaters belonging to the Reel Cinemas chain. Even so, its takings averaged less than $30 per moviehouse, which translates to only three or four viewers at each of the five cinemas throughout the course of the entire weekend. The movie now appears to have been yanked from Reel Cinemas’ lineup. The weekend’s box-office chart was topped by another newcomer, Warcraft: The Beginning, which took $5.28 million from 500 sites.
To be fair, Misconduct — which cost $11 million, according to IMDb — made a similarly fleeting appearance on American screens in February. It pulled in about $15,000 during its opening weekend in the U.S., then sank without a trace after earning a total haul of about $24,000. In South Korea, by contrast, the film somehow drummed up more than $900,000 at the box office.
In spite of its starry cast, which also featured Josh Duhamel and Julia Stiles, critics in Britain slammed the film, with one headline declaring it “the worst film Anthony Hopkins and Al Pacino have ever made” and another calling it worthy of being screened in film schools “as a textbook example of how not to make a movie.” Directed by Shintaro Shimosawa, the film centers on a young lawyer (Duhamel) who goes after a corrupt pharmaceuticals executive (Hopkins) but who also must deal with one of his law firm’s partners (Pacino).
The movie was distributed in Britain by Bulldog Film Distribution. Representatives for Bulldog and Reel Cinemas could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
More European openings for Misconduct are still to come in Italy (June 15), France (August) and Portugal (September).
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