Warner Bros. Pictures’ Doctor Sleep seemingly had everything going for it. Not only was it a proper sequel to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining – considered by many to be one of the scariest films ever made – but it has been booming with positive reviews (some of which – including our own – go as far as calling it a masterpiece) and currently carries a 90% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. What could go wrong? Everything, it turns out.
Early tracking had pegged the Mike Flanagan-directed sequel to open around $30M here in the States, yet it underperformed with an abysmal $14M over the weekend. International didn’t help much either, adding an estimated $20M for a worldwide total of $34M thus far.
This is a crushing blow for those of us who are sick of remakes and prefer canonical takes on the original material. With both Doctor Sleep and Terminator: Dark Fate doing the fanbase right and still underperforming, this is going to send a very, very dangerous message to executives that we aren’t going to support this kind of content and they’ll, in turn, revert back to the straight retelling of classics for modern audiences. We vote with our money and this is the unfortunate result.
The good news here is that Doctor Sleep “only” cost $45M to make, which is a pretty safe number considering the dangerous spends on films like The Meg ($150M+) and Alita ($200M+). It’s awesome to see Warner Bros. showing some budget restraint and at least setting their projects up for success rather than failure, which is why this hurts even more. With that said, it’s going to take a lot less for Doctor Sleep to recoup and it’s still in the realm of possibility, albeit unlikely at this point.
We’ll keep an eye on the next few weeks and report back if any international releases produce stronger numbers.
Photo Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures