Well, it's been three weeks, and Metallica: Through The Never has only pulled in three million dollars on an 18 million dollar budget. I think it's safe to say the movie has bombed in the box office. But is there hope yet?
For the record, I thought the movie was excellent and worth seeing in theaters.
As Axl Rosenberg of MetalSucks very astutely pointed out in a great piece earlier today, the movie could not have picked a worse time to launch the IMAX premiere, as the following week, the movie Gravity took over all the IMAX theaters effectively pushing Metallica out of the most optimal viewing experience for their movie.
Comparing Metallica to other concert films this year, boy band One Direction's film has grossed nearly $30 million so far, meanwhile Katy Perry's concert film drew about 25 million last summer. So there is definitely money to be made at the box office.
Perhaps fans were too confused by the marketing. I was at New York Comic Con over the weekend, and a few fans had asked if I had seen they movie and they all seemed confused as to if it was a concert film or a narrative film. The ambiguity definitely hurt the film. The band should've put the performance and not the narrative at the frontlines of the marketing.
But I don't think the band should pack it up and call it a day. There is still money to be made.
For one thing, the soundtrack is doing really well. In the last week alone, it scanned 12,000 copies with 37,000 copies sold total, and this was in third week of release. That is a huge number for any band in it's third week, and for a live album? That's basically all profit. At this point, I would say the band needs to hurry the hell up and get the product on DVD to release for the Christmas season. The band do gangbusters on CD and DVD sales and it would be a great way to capitalize on all the marketing and get more product out there before the fans forget about it.
If nothing else, the release of the movie was huge publicity for the band. There wasn't a media outlet that didn't cover the release and the band was all over TV and radio leading up to the release of the film. That's got to help other bottom lines like future CD releases, and merchandising.
So yes, Metallica Through The Never did terribly at the box office, but that's not the be-all-end-all. And while it was a loss, I'm sure it's a relative drop in the bucket (although a very expensive drop).
