By: Ashton Newton Freelancer
Warner Brother’s (WB) “Pan” was a huge disappointment at the box office opening weekend. The film cost more than $250 million to make and market, but took home about $40.5 million worldwide.
This just adds to WB’s list of recent box office disappointments with films like “Jupiter Ascending” and “Entourage” also doing poorly. Even with the upcoming Chinese release on Oct. 22, WB is planning on losing at least $100 million on the film. This makes “San Andreas” WB’s only box office success of the year.
Not only was “Pan” a box office disappointment, it was also ripped apart by critics.
Michael Philips, the Tribune Publishing critic, called the film, “The official worst-ever Peter Pan adaption of any sort,” and Peter Bradshaw in a review for The Guardian said, “Joe Wright’s fantastically dull origin-myth reboot of the Peter Pan story resembles nothing so much as a John Lewis Christmas TV ad.”
Director Joe Wright faced some controversy earlier this year for casting Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily. Since the character is supposed to be a Native American, a lot of people were upset about the apparent white washing of the role.
The Harry Potter series was hugely successful for WB as it appealed to younger audiences and adults alike, so the studio wanted to fill that gap with retold classic stories. The studio was already developing a sequel to “Pan” and has a re-imagined “Tarzan” coming next summer.
WB needs a success with a huge year coming up in 2016, featuring “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice”, and “Suicide Squad” hoping to kick off a large DC Cinematic Universe.
With the modern superhero movie craze, those films are projected to do very well for the studio.
There’s also the hotly anticipated Harry Potter Spin-off “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” coming out 2016 that looks extremely promising, but now the pressure is really on for WB with their upcoming lineup of films.
