Gods of Egypt

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**KaptinBadrukk**

Saw some trailers on this on YouTube...thought they were cool...but pulling in less than $15 million this weekend.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/cotown/la-et-mn-gods-of-egypt-bomb-friday-box-office-20160227-story.html

'Gods of Egypt' becomes year's first big-budget bomb at the box office

Looks like the God of Darkness fell upon the opening-day box office for "Gods of Egypt."

Lionsgate's hopes for a mythical franchise set in ancient Egypt were dashed heading into the Oscars weekend on Friday, as the swords-and-sandals epic starring Gerard Butler as Set, the God of Darkness, bombed with an estimated premiere haul of $4.76 million, for a less-than-godlike $1,527 per-screen average.

That likely will translate into a three-day gross of $14 million in domestic box office — a puny figure for a movie estimated to have totaled $140 million in production costs. Thankfully for Lionsgate, tax credits from Australia, where shooting took place, plus foreign pre-sales will reduce the studio's exposure to losses.

Long before its release, "Gods of Egypt" attracted scorn from many quarters for using mostly white actors to play Egyptian characters. Reviewers also refused to bow down to the film; "Gods" earned a scathing score of 23 out of 100 on the critics' aggregation site Metacritic. Moviegoers on Cinemascore, usually lenient graders, gave the film an unimpressive "B minus" rating.

"Gods of Egypt" had to settle for a No. 2 bow on Friday, behind Fox's smash-hit "Deadpool," which piled on $8.95 million starting its third week of release for a cume of $263 million.

Two other major premieres also saw underwhelming box office numbers.

"Triple 9," the thriller from Open Road Films, jockeyed for third place with just $2.14 million, for a subpar $970 per-screen average.

Any Dakkanaughts seen this yet?

**djones520**

I have no intention of seeing it. Trailers just made it look horrible. Visually, it looked great. Storywise, well no thanks.

**KaptinBadrukk**

djones520 wrote:
I have no intention of seeing it. Trailers just made it look horrible. Visually, it looked great. Storywise, well no thanks.

Yeah, I rather liked the visual effects.

So far, 4.8 million in the Box office and a budget of 140 million.

**curran12**

Having seen the trailers, I chose a long time ago to give it a wide berth. Very pretty movie to be sure, but it looked poorly acted and very poorly written.

Not surprised at all that it is bombing.

**jah-joshua**

i'll be seeing it on Monday or Tuesday...
i only go to the theatre for the amazing visual effects stuff that i must see on the big screen...
this definitely looks to be one of those, based on the trailers that i saw before Star Wars and Spectre...
it looks incredible for a Tomb Kings vibe, and should give me a lot of painting inspiration...

i'll let you guys know if it was cool, or not

...

cheers
jah

**Hordini**

The trailers that I saw didn't really appeal to me that much, and I can only imagine the gak storm coming in regards to having yet another film (loosely) based around ancient Egypt that features a majority of the primary cast who are of European descent.

**Relapse**

I figure it's going to be another "Clash of the Titans", so plan on avoiding it.

**ZergSmasher**

Relapse wrote:
I figure it's going to be another "Clash of the Titans", so plan on avoiding it.

Funny, that is what I thought after seeing the trailers. Clash of the Titans in Egypt! Still planning on seeing it for the visual effects if nothing else, as I did enjoy Clash of the Titans.

**BobtheInquisitor**

Please let me know what you think, guys. I'm interested in the film, but not enough to buy tickets without some idea of what to expect.

**Grey Templar**

I've been hemhawing over it. I do like movies that are so bad they're good. But maybe wait for the dvd.

**Mr Nobody**

I saw it today, it's mostly what everyone predicted. The story was as simple as it gets, but the acting was half decent. The visuals were quite fun to watch and they didn't hold back aesthetically. The city of the gods was oversized, dwarfing the regular buildings and sun is pulled across the sky by a chariot over a flat world. They definitely didn't bother staying in reality, which I thought gave the movie some interest.

I don't know if its worth going to the theaters, but I would rent it at least.

**timetowaste85**

Of course it's going to do badly. Deadpool is still in theaters!

**curran12**

Many reviews I'm seeing are likening Gods of Egypt to the Star Wars prequels in that they are both so packed full of CGI that nothing has any weight or impact.

**KaptinBadrukk**

Here's the report on boxofficemojo
http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=main&id=godsofegypt.htm

**LordofHats**

I'm curious how anyone managed to justify to anyone else a $140 million budget for this movie. It looks so bad from the get go.

**Kilkrazy**

I don't know the story but Ancient Egypt has huge cultural resonance and the possibility to do awesome production design so I don't see why it should not pick up a good amount of cash to make it from those angles.

The trailer looks awesome. I have to assume the screenplay is rubbish in some way.

**Shadow Captain Edithae**

Wikipedia says its made $50 million in the box office, not $4.8 million.

**ZergSmasher**

I saw the movie today, and I thoroughly enjoyed it! I go to movies to be entertained, not to nitpick and point out how unrealistic everything is or how stupid the plot is. I was entertained, and the story was not so bad as to make the movie unenjoyable. Visually, the movie is absolutely amazing! I can wholeheartedly recommend this to everyone!

**KaptinBadrukk**

Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Wikipedia says its made $50 million in the box office, not $4.8 million.

That was from a few days ago. And I just checked and it says $38.2 million.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

ZergSmasher wrote:
I saw the movie today, and I thoroughly enjoyed it! I go to movies to be entertained, not to nitpick and point out how unrealistic everything is or how stupid the plot is. I was entertained, and the story was not so bad as to make the movie unenjoyable. Visually, the movie is absolutely amazing! I can wholeheartedly recommend this to everyone!

Glad you liked it.

I will make this clear to everyone: I don't go to movie theaters because I think they are loud.

**Shadow Captain Edithae**

That was from a few days ago. And I just checked and it says $38.2 million.

I was rounding up. And I must have read it wrong as 48.

**Breotan**

That's still not a lot of people going to see it, based on how expensive movie tickets are.

**Kilkrazy**

The problem I am finding is that some of these films aren't being shown at many cinemas.

There are four multi-screen cinemas I can get to easily without going into London. None of them have shown Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, or are listing Gods of Egypt.

I think this must be a factor in low box office receipts.

**Ouze**

I truly can't understand why anyone would pay good money to see such a movie in the theater after seeing that trailer. You're asking why it did poorly in the theater, and I think it's pretty self-evident: It looks incredibly bad in my opinion.

In 2016, I think Gerard Butler might be a solid bad movie coal mine canary.

**agnosto**

Trailers make it look terrible and the fact that it's full of white people even breaks from mythology. Sure, at one point Northern Egypt was settled by people of Greek extraction but that didn't mean brown and black people didn't exist at all.

It's sad that they even released a statement when people started panning the movie:

“We recognize that it is our responsibility to help ensure that casting decisions reflect the diversity and culture of the time periods portrayed. In this instance we failed to live up to our own standards of sensitivity and diversity, for which we sincerely apologize. Lionsgate is deeply committed to making films that reflect the diversity of our audiences. We have, can and will continue to do better.”

Let's see:
The way the Egyptians pictured the god, Set:

The way Hollywood pictured it:

Sad, really.

**curran12**

Kilkrazy wrote:
The problem I am finding is that some of these films aren't being shown at many cinemas.

There are four multi-screen cinemas I can get to easily without going into London. None of them have shown Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, or are listing Gods of Egypt.

I think this must be a factor in low box office receipts.

Could it also...POSSIBLY...be that it is just a plain bad movie? Not sure why you were looking for so many other explanations that don't point it out as a bad film.

**Shadow Captain Edithae**

That apology is bull s***.. You don't accidentally miscast an entire movie in the wrong ethnicity. They knew what they were doing.

**DarkTraveler777**

Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
That apology is bull s***.. You don't accidentally miscast an entire movie in the wrong ethnicity. They knew what they were doing.

Agreed. Had this movie been called Gods of the North with Nordic mythology explored instead of Egyptian the casting would have been lovely. It is pretty ridiculous that in 2014 (or whenever this movie first went to casting) that people had the idea not to use actors appropriate for the setting and instead just went for big names to drive up the possible box office returns. As the popularity of #Oscarsowhite shows people are sick of the dated and backwards thinking that permeates a lot of Hollywood's decisions.

Remember when Arnold Schwarzenegger was dubbed over in Hercules in New York because producers didn't think American audiences would want to hear his Austrian accent? I guess we haven't advanced that much in the 40+ years since that turd of a movie came out.

**agnosto**

It gets better. Apparently the director felt the need to rant on Facebook about the poor reviews...

…You see, my dear fellow FBookers, I have rarely gotten great reviews… on any of my movies, apart from those by reviewers who think for themselves and make up their own opinions. Sadly those type of reviewers are nearly all dead. Good reviews often come many years after the movie has opened. I guess I have the knack of rubbing reviewers the wrong way - always have. This time of course they have bigger axes to grind - they can rip into my movie while trying to make their mainly pale asses look so politically correct by screaming "white-wash!!!" like the deranged idiots they all are…

**Mr Nobody**

If the movie had accurate skin colours, Osiris should have been green.

**Kilkrazy**

I don't think it was a deliberately racist decision to make a fim based on Egyptian mythology and cast white actors. The real ancient Egytians were Hamites, I believe, descended from Caucasian, so they would presumably have looked relatively 'white' though no doubt ruddier of skin than people from the most northern climes.

Egyptian pictorial art shows them with terracotta colour skin, but this is thought to be partly artistic convention, to demonstrate rude health.

Naturally there were black skinned people from the south, the Nubians, who founded some of the pharaonic dynasties.

It's impossible to know quite how white, red or black the general population or the noble population might have looked after all this mixing.

The long and short of it is that Egyptian gods usually had animal heads anyway, and maybe Hollywood should have found enough Arabic looking or black actors to play everyone, then used the CG to put the gods' heads on to them. They could have done it to the white actors, and maybe people wouldn't have noticed the pale arms and legs so much.