The Keanu Reeves Samurai Action Movie 47 Ronin Was A Massive Bomb – What Happened?
Keanu Reeves has starred in some of the biggest movies of all time, from "The Matrix" to "Toy Story 4," as well as the $1 billion "John Wick" franchise. The man has enduring star power, there's no denying that. When you survive decades in Hollywood, they're not all going to be winners. Reeves has his share of flops as well. But in 2013, he starred in one of the absolute biggest box office flops of all time in the form of "47 Ronin."
The film, which has actually been trending in Netflix's top ten as of late, focuses on a group of outcast samurai who must turn to a mixed-blood warrior (Reeves) to help them take revenge on an evil overlord. A fine premise for a blockbuster action film, right? Well, perhaps conceptually. However, in practice, the film may have cost Universal Pictures as much as $175 million in losses.
Be that as it may, the fact that the film has been trending on Netflix as of late suggests an audience for it has emerged in the years since its original release. Amazingly enough, a direct-to-streaming sequel, "Blade of the 47 Ronin," was released on Netflix in late 2022. So sure, the narrative may be changing, but what went so wrong during the film's initial run in theaters? Let's dig in.
Universal gave a massive budget to an untested director
One of the biggest indicators that Universal was taking a massive gamble with "47 Ronin" was their choice of director. Carl Rinsch was plucked from obscurity, having only some short films and commercials, including one for Heineken, under his belt. This served as his feature directorial debut, and it was a big one at that. The movie wound up with an initial budget in the $170 million range. Mind you, this was a decade ago, and budgets that big weren't quite as frequent as they are now. Even incredibly seasoned directors rarely make films that big. Rinsch? This was his first step up to the plate.
Things did not go well. Rinsch actually had the movie removed from his hands during the editing process, with then-Universal co-chair Donna Langley taking over the project personally. At the time, it was reported that the budget had ballooned to an outlandish $225 million. That is an obscene amount for a samurai film. That's not to say that relatively unproven directors can't find success in the blockbuster world, but in this case, it most certainly did not pan out.
Critics were not kind to the movie
In the end, Universal's attempts to save the movie after things had already gone off the rails proved to be fruitless. Part of the inflated budget had to do with the fact that the studio ordered reshoots to try and improve the film. Unfortunately, that king's ransom of a budget ended up producing a film that critics were — to say the very least — not impressed with.
"47 Ronin" was met with widespread negative reviews, and to this day holds a very poor 16% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The audience score isn't much better, all things considered, at 48%. The movie's reception was so bad that it actually did some pretty significant damage to Reeves' career. Thankfully, "John Wick" came out the following year and led to a pretty significant revival for him. That having been said, the tidal wave of negative reviews did the movie precisely zero favors when it finally hit theaters.
Unimaginably stiff competition
Due to the troubles in post-production, reshoots, and trying to get the movie right, Universal ultimately had to delay the movie several times before they finally landed on the weekend of December 27, 2013. That Christmas frame tends to be a lucrative one at the box office, and in the case of 2013, it absolutely was — just not for "47 Ronin." Unfortunately for all involved, not only was the movie not getting any help from critics, but it faced unbelievably stiff, direct competition in theaters.
Both "The Wolf of Wall Street" and "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" opened that weekend, while "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug" was in the middle of its excellent run atop the charts, winning its third weekend in a row. Meanwhile, "Frozen," "Anchorman 2," "American Hustle," "Saving Mr. Banks," and "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire" were also all firmly in the top ten. A murderer's row of successful movies all out at the same time. It seems almost unimaginable in our post-pandemic landscape. That being the case, "47 Ronin had to settle for ninth place with an abysmal $9.9 million opening weekend. The following weekend, it fell to 11 and tumbled into oblivion from there, finishing its run with just $151.7 million worldwide.
As is often the case, no one thing went wrong, but it was a combination of factors we often see with Hollywood's biggest bombs. The budget was too big, the movie wasn't received well, and there was turmoil behind the scenes. These are remarkably difficult things to overcome. In this case, Universal paid the price for letting this one get away from them.