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, Borderlandsβ€”which is reportedly already getting a home release in late Augustβ€”is sitting at a cool $25 million worldwide at the box office.

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[–] 84 points 2 years ago (2 children)
  • [–] 50 points 2 years ago (1 child)

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

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [+] 28 points 2 years ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (4 children)
  • [–] 16 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years 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.

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  • [–] 19 points 2 years ago (2 children)
  • [–] 18 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I didn't, but I would have gone to see it if I knew.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

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

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years 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.

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  • [–] [S] 9 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (3 children)

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

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (2 children)

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

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years 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.

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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago

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

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  • [–] 9 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [–] [S] 4 points 2 years 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).

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (2 children)

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

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  • [–] [S] 6 points 2 years 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!

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

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

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    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

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Is The Crow this year's Morbius?

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago

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

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