Why Did Battleship Sink At The Box Office?
In hindsight, the summer of 2012 might be one for the ages, with huge films like "The Hunger Games," "Prometheus," "Men in Black 3," "Magic Mike," "Ted," and "The Dark Knight Rises" (among many others) coming out in just the span of a few months. New franchises, old franchises made new again, surprise hits — it was a summer that had everything. It even had some legendarily huge flops.
To that end, Universal Pictures and director Peter Berg ("Hancock") suffered a brutal loss with "Battleship," a big-budget adaptation of sorts based on the best-selling board game of the same name. The film boasts an A-list cast led by the likes of Taylor Kitsch ("John Carter"), Liam Neeson ("Taken"), Alexander Skarsgård ("True Blood"), and pop star Rhianna. Given that the board game doesn't have much story, the filmmakers crafted a story that sees the Navy trying to stop an alien invasion.
Unfortunately for Universal and the game's publisher, Milton Bradley, the movie did not perform well (to put it mildly) and arguably became the biggest box office bomb of summer 2012, if not that entire year. Against a staggeringly huge $209 million production budget (which does not account for marketing), the film earned just $303 million worldwide, racking up estimated losses totaling $150 million. Yikes. So, what went wrong exactly? How could Universal make such a misguided bet on a movie this expensive? Let's get into it.
It wasn't a very good movie
This isn't to say that no bad movie ever made a lot of money — just look at Sony's "Venom," which made well over $800 million against absolutely scathing reviews from many critics. But making a good movie certainly helps when spending more than $200 million on a summer blockbuster. "Battleship" simply didn't come out looking very good in the eyes of many critics and general moviegoers in its day. As it stands, the film holds a super rough 33% critical approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes to go with a poor 54% audience score.
Of course, that is but one measure of how a film is received, but it is a decent indication that the must-see buzz needed for a movie this expensive just wasn't there. Indifference wasn't going to generate the ticket sales needed for an adaptation of this size, but with so many reviews being downright negative? The writing was on the wall from the start in some ways, with the movie kind of doomed by that absolutely gigantic production spend. But there was another superhero-sized problem just around the corner as well.
Universal didn't count on The Avengers
Even in the best circumstances, a movie like "Battleship" would need to make gigantic sums of money both domestically and abroad to turn a profit. At $209 million, we're talking about likely needing $600 million or so worldwide just to break even. But when facing very stiff, direct competition? The challenge becomes almost insurmountable. Sadly for Universal, Disney and Marvel Studios had one of the biggest hits of all time on their hands with "The Avengers" that same summer, which was steamrolling the competition.
"The Avengers" went on to earn more than $1.5 billion globally, reshaping the way studios think about blockbuster filmmaking. "Battleship" surfaced in North America on May 18, going up against Marvel's massive team-up film in its third weekend. It was no contest, with Earth's mightiest heroes taking in another $55.6 million, while the alien-invasion flick based on a board game made just $25.5 million. Peter Berg had this to say to MTV at the time:
"The movie kicked butt internationally, but we kind of ran into a wall when 'Avengers' refused to go away. 'The Avengers' outperformed everything. It was impossible for 'Battleship' to get any oxygen. I would have loved to have come out three weeks before 'The Avengers' domestically, like we did internationally. We did OK, but in hindsight — which my grandmother used to say is worth about a bucket of spit — we would have [released the movie] ahead of 'The Avengers,' not realizing it would have become, I think, the second biggest film in history behind 'Avatar.'"
Frankly, it wasn't just "The Avengers" that was giving "Battleship" some competition. "The Hunger Games" was still in the top ten at that time, with other movies like "The Dictator" and "Dark Shadows" giving audiences other options, as well. As a result, "Battleship" topped out with a crushingly bad $65.4 million domestically.
Taking the wrong lesson from Transformers
The only thing that helped Universal out at all here was the fact that "Battleship" performed okay overseas, taking in $237.6 million. If it had performed as well in the U.S., they'd be looking at a global take just shy of $500 million, and over time — between cable rights, Blu-ray/DVD sales, etc. — they probably would have broken even. That's not the way things shook out, though, and this would-be franchise was dead in the water within mere days of its domestic release.
Universal and Milton Bradley saw dollar signs in their eyes with this endeavor, looking at 2007's "Transformers" and its sequels as a sign that something like this could generate a multi-billion-dollar franchise. They even made a big, expensive tie-in video game (which also flopped upon release). And sure, that approach can work, but that series had lots of recognizable characters and some lore to mine for an actual story. Also, not for nothing, even Michael Bay made that first "Transformers" movie for $151 million, which gets you to profits a lot sooner than a $209 million spend.
The studio took the wrong lesson from "Transformers." Audiences don't merely want a movie based on a toy they feel some nostalgia for. Nostalgia can be a genesis point, and it can provide some edge in the marketplace, but there's got to be more there for moviegoers to latch onto. While critics may not always be on the side of Bay's giant robot films, general audiences demonstrated that they liked what he was selling time and time again. Universal, foolishly, wildly overextended themselves in chasing a similar puck.