Regarding WWE Films’ repeated inability to make a box office impact, “Legendary” star Patricia Clarkson says it best–“I don’t know how.”
WWE’s latest film, which also stars Danny Glover and wrestler John Cena, aimed to make a quick, albeit minor impact as a limited release before heading to the lucrative DVD market. While DVD sales and rentals remain a potentially-viable option given Cena’s past success in that medium, “Legendary” failed in its first mission, producing an opening weekend box office take that in no way could be described as successful.
On 177 screens, the film earned an estimated $135,210 this weekend. Releases so limited rarely prove capable of ranking in the top ten for box office receipts, but because there are so few options for seeing the film, the per-theatre average tends to make for a strong comparison to wider releases. That was not the case with “Legendary.”
With only $764 in receipts per screen, its theatrical average was not only abysmal for a new limited release, but actually below that of the top fourteen “wide release” films this weekend. Considering “Legendary” received significant promotion to its television audience of at least 5 million domestic viewers, the film received a marketing campaign far more mainstream and extensive than is granted to many similarly-limited releases.
As a comparison, WWE’s other John Cena vehicles included “The Marine” (opening weekend of $7.1 million with a $2800 per-screen average) and “12 Rounds” (opening weekend of $5.3 million with a $2300 per-screen average).
The poor performance left little available for WWE to include in its “Did You Know” factoid piece Monday on RAW. Among those achievements it could mention are, “‘Legendary’ earned more per-screen than ‘The Twilight Saga: Eclipse’ did in its eleventh weekend at the box office” or “Legendary earned more cumulative box office dollars than ‘The Tillman Story’ did in its fourth weekend of availability on just 25 screens.