Universal Had Two Different Dracula Movies Flop At The Box Office This Year
Universal Pictures has had a pretty damn good year at the box office, with "M3GAN" serving as one of the biggest original hits of the year, and "The Super Mario Bros. Movie" currently standing alone as the highest-grossing movie of the year (but "Barbie" might have something to say about that soon). But moviemaking is always a gamble of sorts, and some gambles just don't pay off. Case in point, the studio suffered a sizable flop over the weekend with "The Last Voyage of the Demeter," as the film debuted to a tiny $6.5 million, placing fifth on the charts well behind "Meg 2: The Trench," which was in its second weekend. Most amazing of all? It was the second time this year that Universal found itself on the wrong side of a flop involving Dracula.
Back in April, the studio released director Chris McKay's "Renfield," named after Dracula's faithful assistant who has been a part of the vampire's story from the beginning. He was given the spotlight in this new take on the material, as portrayed by Nicholas Hoult, with none other than Nicolas Cage on board as Dracula. It was an inspired bit of casting but the movie itself just didn't catch on with audiences. It lost to "The Pope's Exorcist" on opening weekend and, ultimately, topped out at just $26.7 million worldwide, per The Numbers. Against a reported $65 million production budget, it represents a costly disaster.
Similarly, director André Øvredal's "Last Voyage of the Demeter" represents a fascinating take on Bram Stoker's "Dracula," adapting a single chapter from the classic book. It's a movie that has been in development for literal decades and finally managed to get off the ground. Unfortunately, "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" are still going strong, as is "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem." It kind of got buried as a result and now has to navigate very choppy waters in the coming weeks. It will be very lucky to get to $25 million domestically at this point, and its international prospects are quite grim.
Different Dracula, same problems
Before digging into what went wrong here, I should say that I commend Universal for trying to do something different in both cases. We're talking about a cinematic figure in Dracula that has been going strong for literally more than 100 years. It needs to feel fresh in order to live on. It's just unfortunate that not once but twice in the same year very different takes on the material failed to catch on the way they needed to. That said, there are some key takeaways here.
Neither movie scored particularly well with critics, broadly speaking. You can read /Film's reviews of "Renfield" and "The Last Voyage of the Demeter" here and here, respectively. That certainly doesn't help matters, particularly when dealing with stiff competition, which both movies were contending with in spades.
Both of these movies were also, frankly, too expensive. "Renfield" and its aforementioned $65 million budget is particularly high for horror, but "Demeter" also carries a high $45 million budget. Because of that, these movies probably needed to make at least $160 million and $112 million worldwide just to break even. Again, that's at a minimum. Part of what helps something like "M3GAN" is the fact that it had a $12 million budget so it could have made $50 million worldwide and been just fine. The fact that it made $179 million is just drenching the cake in icing.
Horror, in general, has been the most reliable genre in the post-quarantine landscape. A major factor is the fact that genre pictures can be made for reasonable amounts of money, allowing for maximum profit if one hits. But it also means mitigating losses when one doesn't. That's why "The Blackening" only making $17.7 million isn't a catastrophe. Is it disappointing? Yes, but not a disaster. Universal needs to accept these losses and extract the painful lessons moving forward.
"The Last Voyage of the Demeter" is in theaters now.