Earlier this month, Borderlands arrived in theaters to horrendous reviews and bad box office numbers. At the time, many assumed it might be the biggest cinematic dud of 2024. But, that title is now held by the newly released Crow reboot.

The idea of rebooting The Crow was already a strange and controversial one. Sure, the original 1994 film was a small but profitable hit, but it is more widely known for the tragedy surrounding the death of Brandon Lee during its production. The following sequels to the OG Crow failed to find success. Most people believed it was wrong to even reboot the series. Yet, Hollywood went ahead and made a reboot anyway. And what do you know, it’s flopping hard!

The Crow reboot released on August 23 to negative reviews from critics and moviegoers. After its opening weekend, it only earned $4.6 million domestically at the box office. Yikes! In comparison, Borderlands made over $8.5 million during its first weekend.

After about five days in theaters, The Crow has made less than $10 million. Meanwhile, Borderlands—which is reportedly already getting a home release in late August—is sitting at a cool $25 million worldwide at the box office.

  • @[email protected]
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    502 months ago

    Based on a ratio of box office to production budget, Borderlands is still the biggest bomb hands down.

    • @[email protected]
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      22 months ago

      Do we have the budget for the Crow? It definitely seems cheaper with that lame ending, but they didn’t spend no money on advertising either.

    • @deus
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      212 months ago

      Well, the Visigothic Kingdom lasted for 30 more years after 690, so I’m inclined to say yes.

    • @Cornelius_Wangenheim
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      2 months ago

      Wednesday was incredibly popular and is probably why there’s a bit of a goth revival going on.

    • NielsBohron
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      2 months ago

      Type O Negative had two albums in the 2000’s, and they were only OK (especially compared to their 90’s albums), but I’d say they still count as “pulling off something remotely ‘goth’”

      Plus, Nine Inch Nails has some good stuff in the aughts, and Trent Reznor’s brand of industrial rock is definitely “goth-adjacent,” as are My Chemical Romance’s The Black Parade (2006, I think) and AFI’s Sing the Sorrow (2003), which are both great albums.

      And in more recent music, the band Creeper is really killing it. Their rock opera Sex, Death, and the Infinite Void is very goth and it’s amazingly good (especially as someone who turned his nose up at pop-punk as a kid).

      In non-music media, there have been some really good comics with goth aesthetics in the last 20 years, and I can give some good recs if anyone is interested.

    • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝OPM
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      52 months ago

      We’ve been covering both films here for a while. Hit “subscribe” for all your movie news that’s fit to e-print.

    • Don_Dickle
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      42 months ago

      This is why for the past years I download my movies.

  • @[email protected]
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    182 months ago

    I’ve heard about both of these releases for the first time recently and had no idea they were out, so problem number 1 identified.

    • @[email protected]
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      102 months ago

      I mean, how do you typically hear about movies? I saw trailers for both at the last movie I was at, and Borderlands had a pretty big ad run.

      • @Mog_fanatic
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        52 months ago

        Yeah I never go to theaters. I hadn’t heard anything about the crow but borderlands was pretty much unavoidable. I saw ads for that thing absolutely everywhere.

      • @[email protected]
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        2 months ago

        I don’t go to movies very often, but I might if I heard more about what is playing. Targeting ads at people already viewing them regularly seems unsustainable.

        • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝OPM
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          32 months ago

          Although they are the ones who go to the cinema regularly. Targeting them at people who don’t go seems a waste.

          • @[email protected]
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            2 months ago

            But if they stop going at any point then they stop hearing about it. Its a naturally shrinking demographic.

            You need to reach out to new audiences to replace old ones. We need ads at locations and on platforms frequented by youth (under 30) to see good box office returns for obscure films.

      • Ricky Rigatoni
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        12 months ago

        Since I don’t go to the theater, watch tv, use adblock on the internet, and don’t follow any movie related news sources… I learn about movies by people complaining about how bad they are.

    • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝OPM
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      82 months ago

      Problems 1 and 2 are: no-one thought this was a good idea when they were announced and that turned out to be the case. Not letting people know was them cutting their losses - Borderlands ad spend was very much lower than a film of that budget should have had and it’s likely down to the fact that they knew it’d crash and burn so they didn’t want to throw good money after bad.

      • @[email protected]
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        22 months ago

        I thought it was a good idea when it was Jason Momoa as The Crow but that’s just cause I think he is a secret emo and it would have been funny.

    • Die4Ever
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      42 months ago

      why advertise bad movies? just a waste of money doing marketing

      • SineSwiper
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        72 months ago

        Why create bad movies? It’s a waste of money in the first place.

        • @[email protected]
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          22 months ago

          Well the Borderlands movie gave a bunch of Hollywood socialites a vacation in Budapest before the covid restrictions were completely released in California… So probably for reasons like that.

        • Die4Ever
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          12 months ago

          Well they don’t always know ahead of time the movie will be bad, but once the movie is finished or nearly finished they can watch the movie and decide if it’s worth a lot of marketing or not

      • @Crashumbc
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        42 months ago

        While true it also becomes a self fulfilling prophecy though.

      • @[email protected]
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        12 months ago

        Because our metric for good and bad is whether or not a large number of people payed to see it.

        Hollywood Accounting might see it as a loss, but sometimes they seem to want to kill a project for shits and giggles, like they did to Treasure Planet.

        You want to know how to make almost every movie a good movie? Target the correct audiences.

  • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet
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    152 months ago

    They actually released this thing in the theater? Wow, talk about being completely out of touch.

  • @[email protected]
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    82 months ago

    I feel like hardly anybody except hardcore movie fans knew this movie was coming out until the eve of its release. This is surely still a massive flop, but it ain’t surprising.

    • @Nuke_the_whales
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      52 months ago

      Really? I’ve been casually seeing ads and hearing about it for months

    • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝OPM
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      42 months ago

      The trailers have been running for a while and it has been talked about on social media quite a bit (rarely in a good light). I also assume it would be on the radar of fans of the games but I suspect most announcements would have annoyed them (quite who the target audience was is a mystery).

  • CurlyWurlies4All
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    72 months ago

    Is this the lowest rated year of movies ever? Does rotten tomatoes do average ratings by year?

    • ᴇᴍᴘᴇʀᴏʀ 帝OPM
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      52 months ago

      I don’t think they do.

      More interesting would be crunching the numbers at Box Office Mojo, who have an annual overview but it would be worth taking, for example, the ten or twenty films of the year with the largest budgets and look at the returns. I smell a spreadsheet coming on!

    • @Nuke_the_whales
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      32 months ago

      If they did it by year 1993-1994 would blow every other year out of the water

  • @blackfire
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    32 months ago

    There are 3 other Crow films that people just forget about. For some weird reason. I don’t know why this one gets so much hate. They should totally build out the Crow universe

    • @Nuke_the_whales
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      12 months ago

      Huh? It gets so much hate cause it’s unnecessary and apparently crap. And you’re saying they should do more of this??

      • @blackfire
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        12 months ago

        What the other 2 Crow films they weren’t great compared to the original either doesn’t mean you cant try something.

  • JustEnoughDucks
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    22 months ago

    Ooooh Eric from The Regulation Podcast will be feeling this. He spent double the points on The Crow that Andrew spent on Twisters 😂