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Horror Fans Are Loving the Wildly Fun ‘Overlord,’ But It’s Failing at the Box Office

Published

5 years ago

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Horror is dead. Just kidding.

Paramount Pictures hoped to avoid the October clutter and catch post-Halloween audiences with Overlord, their WW II-themed horror film from J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot. The Julius Avery-directed film was riding high off positive reviews out of this past September’s Fantastic Fest, but couldn’t connect with general audiences as it barely topped $10M in its opening weekend. (It could have been worse – Sony’s The Girl in the Spider’s Web: A New Dragon Tattoo Story only took in $8M.) With a reported budget of $38M, it added another $9M overseas for a global take of $19M. It needs at least $125-150M worldwide to break even. Unless China comes through in spades, chalk this one up as a flop.

There’s a bit of a parallel between Overlord‘s failure to draw in an audience and that of Fox’s The Predator, both films that went for brawn over brains, delivering nonstop action and buckets of fun. While the latter may not have had the full support of the community, Overlord appeared to draw strong positive responses from horror fans across social media platforms and here on Bloody Disgusting. From phenomenal character development to wicked, gross-out effects, Overlord delivered a perfect hybrid between the original Predator, Inglourious Basterds and Re-Animator.

It appears that Paramount sold us horror fans, but missed out on the general public – could they have marketed this as a World War II thriller as opposed to that of horror? It’s quite possible trying to sell both audiences bit the studio in the ass. No matter, Overlord is one of the most entertaining genre films of the year and we highly recommend seeing it.

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Horror movie fanatic who co-founded Bloody Disgusting in 2001. Producer on Southbound, V/H/S/2/3/94, SiREN, Under the Bed, and A Horrible Way to Die. Chicago-based. Horror, pizza and basketball connoisseur. Taco Bell daily. Franchise favs: Hellraiser, Child's Play, A Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, Scream and Friday the 13th. Horror 365 days a year.

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Dev Patel’s ‘Monkey Man’ Is Now Available to Watch at Home!

Published

3 hours ago

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April 23, 2024

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monkey man

After pulling in $28 million at the worldwide box office this month, director (and star) Dev Patel’s critically acclaimed action-thriller Monkey Man is now available to watch at home.

You can rent Monkey Man for $19.99 or digitally purchase the film for $24.99!

Monkey Man is currently 88% Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, with Bloody Disgusting’s head critic Meagan Navarro awarding the film 4.5/5 stars in her review out of SXSW back in March.

Meagan raves, “While the violence onscreen is palpable and painful, it’s not just the exquisite fight choreography and thrilling action set pieces that set Monkey Man apart but also its political consciousness, unique narrative structure, and myth-making scale.”

“While Monkey Man pays tribute to all of the action genre’s greats, from the Indonesian action classics to Korean revenge cinema and even a John Wick joke or two, Dev Patel’s cultural spin and unique narrative structure leave behind all influences in the dust for new terrain,” Meagan’s review continues.

She adds, “Monkey Man presents Dev Patel as a new action hero, a tenacious underdog with a penetrating stare who bites, bludgeons, and stabs his way through bodies to gloriously bloody excess. More excitingly, the film introduces Patel as a strong visionary right out of the gate.”

Inspired by the legend of Hanuman, Monkey Man stars Patel as Kid, an anonymous young man who ekes out a meager living in an underground fight club where, night after night, wearing a gorilla mask, he is beaten bloody by more popular fighters for cash. After years of suppressed rage, Kid discovers a way to infiltrate the enclave of the city’s sinister elite. As his childhood trauma boils over, his mysteriously scarred hands unleash an explosive campaign of retribution to settle the score with the men who took everything from him.

Monkey Man is produced by Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Productions.

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