Blade Runner 2049 has been playing in theaters for a few weeks now, and unfortunately it is not the box office success many hoped it would be prior to its release. Arriving 35 years after Ridley Scott’s seminal piece of science-fiction, the Blade Runner sequel received plenty of critical praise when it first opened. Everything from the breathtaking visuals to strong performances earned high marks, with many in agreement that it was one of the best films of the year. Some (including us) even believed it could replicate Mad Max: Fury Road’s path to a Best Picture nomination at the Oscars - where it should at the very least dominate the technical categories.
However fair this may be, 2049’s Academy Award chances took a bit of a hit when the film underperformed at the box office. While there typically is no correlation between commercial gross and prestige nominations, genre pictures like Blade Runner usually need to post high numbers in order to be considered. After all, nobody pegged Scott’s The Martian as Best Picture material until it opened to the tune of $54.3 million in its opening weekend - a figure many predicted Blade Runner to match or top. With 2049’s box office run winding down to a close, we’re going to take a look at its performance, both domestically and worldwide.
A Stateside Flop
Though Blade Runner 2049 won its opening weekend with $32.7 million, Warner Bros. wasn’t exactly popping champagne bottles over that haul. The film wildly went below expectations, which indicated a debut in the range of $50+ million. There were a number of factors working in 2049’s favor as it premiered, including the widespread acclaim and recognizability of the brand name. In 1982, the original Blade Runner was a notorious bomb, but its reputation improved exponentially in the decades since. It’s now considered one of the best films ever made, with a passionate fan base eager to see the story continue. That being said, some may have overestimated how much of an outreach Blade Runner has.
The main reason behind 2049’s middling performance, as we’ve already detailed, is the simple fact that the property doesn’t have as much mainstream appeal as similar titles. In the pre-Deadpool era, you could make an argument that the R-rating limited 2049’s target audience, but with both the Merc with a Mouth and Logan becoming hits, that’s a sentiment that doesn’t hold much water. Despite the whopping $150+ million production budget, Blade Runner was designed with a smaller niche in mind - cinephiles, mostly. Though the original is a cult classic, that doesn’t put it in the same ballpark as Star Wars in regards to marketability. Clocking in at nearly three hours didn’t help matters either, limiting the number of daily screenings Blade Runner could secure. Although, other movies with similar runtimes have become blockbusters.
With this October being one of the worst for movies in recent memory, 2049 fans hoped Denis Villeneuve’s film could be saved by strong legs, but that didn’t come to pass. It was weekend champion for only its opening frame, sliding to second place the following weekend, when Happy Death Day took the top spot. Things have only gotten worse as the month has gone on. In this past weekend (the movie’s fourth at the box office), it made just $4.1 million and had already been pulled from 1,637 theaters. Domestically, its total currently stands at $81.5 million, which is less than what its predecessor earned ($83.7 million for original run) when adjusted for 2017. After Villeneuve broke through last year with the $100 million hit Arrival, it was believed he could sell anything with his name, but that obviously isn’t the case.
WB was certainly hoping for a stronger showing in the States, but throughout history, several films have been saved from box office purgatory by the international markets. Sometimes, a large showing in foreign countries can be enough to help a film turn a profit, but sadly, 2049 isn’t getting much help there either. After all, it was a flop in China too.
No International Help
As we’ve explained before, the general rule of thumb is that in order for a film to recoup its money (including marketing costs), it needs to earn at least twice its production budget. This means that the break even point for Blade Runner 2049 is somewhere between $300 - 370 million, a figure it is nowhere near to crossing. Currently, its global total stands at $223.1 million, meaning if the movie were to end its run today, WB/Sony (the international distributor) would lose approximately $76.9 million at least, and around $146.9 million at the most. If it’s closer to that latter number, we’re approaching Geostorm territory in terms of being in the red.
With it bombing in China, Blade Runner’s chances of turning things around are spent. It has now opened everywhere it was set for release, and multiplexes are about to get a double dose of comic book fare. Thor: Ragnarok has already made $100 million internationally ahead of its U.S. premiere, and Justice League comes out in just a couple of weeks. 2049 is going to have little-to-no carryover into November. As beloved as Blade Runner is, there’s no way it can compete with the Marvel and DC cinematic universes, which are the biggest non-Star Wars franchises operating in Hollywood. Even if 2049 was a rousing box office success, this would be the time when the numbers started to go down. Studio executives are going to have to lick their wounds and move on to their next projects. WB is thankful the likes of Wonder Woman and IT drew in large crowds.
It will be interesting to see if there are any longterm ramifications for how Blade Runner 2049 held up. Villeneuve is developing a reboot of Dune and is also in talks to helm a Cleopatra biopic, neither of which would be cheap endeavors. Given the Oscar-nominee’s sterling critical standing as one of this generation’s finest filmmakers, one would hope that he will continue to have the clout he has earned over the last handful of years. Villeneuve did receive final cut of 2049 and the end result (in terms of quality) paid off, so this may be a matter of trying to keep his budgets in check while giving him creative freedom. Knocking a Blade Runner sequel out of the park had the potential to push Villeneuve into the stratosphere of a Christopher Nolan, but he doesn’t have that kind of pull with casual moviegoers.
Much like the original, Blade Runner 2049 could find new life once it hits home media. With a number of highly-anticipated works coming out this fall and winter, general audiences may have been inclined to save their dollars for the likes of Ragnarok and The Last Jedi, waiting to see 2049 a different time. It should generate additional revenue on digital and Blu-ray, and while that probably won’t be enough to push the film into the black, it ideally will make the ultimate losses less severe.
Conclusion
There sadly isn’t any gray area here. Blade Runner 2049 was not a box office success and suffered a similar fate as the original film, more noteworthy for its technical prowess and thought-provoking narrative than its ability to sell tickets. Still, WB deserves credit for releasing the film as it was. They had to have known early on the odds of it becoming a runaway smash were slim, and they moved forward with it anyway, giving Villeneuve the leeway to tell the story he wanted with minimal interference. Executives could have demanded scenes be cut in order to shorten the runtime or change the marketing strategy, but everyone involved stuck to their guns.
Though 2049’s open-ended conclusion leaves a third installment in the series possible, that is unlikely to occur now. The film industry is still a business first, and if this is the best Blade Runner could do in 2017, well after it had become an all-time classic, another entry probably wouldn’t garner much interest regardless of when it came out. Fortunately, the sequel was crafted in a way that it stands on its own merits and works as a self-contained movie that doesn’t need future films to address dangling threads and resolve character arcs. If this is the last we’ve seen of this particular dystopian future, fans will be happy with what they got.
