Steve Carell’s ‘Welcome To Marwen’ Expected To Lose $60 Million After Dismal Opening Weekend

This past weekend was always expected to be a bloodbath at the box office. Months ago, we had circled the weekend of December 21 on our calendar as make-or-break for some of the year’s biggest films. With “Aquaman,” “Bumblebee,” and “Mary Poppins Returns” all vying for that hard-earned Christmas dollar, it seemed like there was bound to be at least one casualty. And there definitely was a casualty – Robert Zemeckis’ “Welcome to Marwen.”

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To put it bluntly, the debut weekend for the Steve Carell-starring drama was a disaster. There are no two ways about it. The film opened on Friday, amid the chaos explained above (plus with ‘Spider-Man’ and other holdovers doing well) and posted a dismal $2.4 million in three days (the numbers are still out for the holiday weekend).

With a debut weekend like that, analysts (via Deadline) are now saying that Zemeckis’ film could lose up to $60 million after everything is all said and done. Yes, that’s even after home video and VOD sales. Needless to say, ‘Marwen’ is going to be a black eye on the IMDBs of everyone involved. So, how did this happen? Well, it appears that ‘Marwen’ got caught up in a shitstorm that it had no hope of escaping.

There’s been a lot of anticipation leading up to ‘Marwen.’ The film has a stellar cast, led by Carell, and a legendary director (who, admittedly, has been struggling as of late) with Zemeckis. But even when the first trailers were hitting, people were concerned. You see, ‘Marwen’ is inspired by the true story of Mark Hogancamp, which was already adapted in the quite good doc “Marwencol.” And judging by those first trailers, it was clear that there was something amiss about Zemeckis’ film.

READ MORE: ‘Welcome To Marwen’: Robert Zemeckis Crafts A Laughable After School Fairy Tale Special About Trauma [Review]

Universal saw the writing on the wall, as well, when the film was moved from the coveted November 21 release date to the gauntlet that was last weekend. The studio was prioritizing “Green Book” for its awards season push, leaving ‘Marwen’ out in the cold. That’s when the early buzz started to hit that the studio was anticipating a bit of a stinker with ‘Marwen’ and the advertising was cut from a reported $120 million to a much more feasible $60 million. Add to that the reported budget of $40 million (some say $50 million), and you’re looking at a film that needs to have strong box office legs to turn a profit.

The studio’s hope for a profit was dashed when reviews hit last week, touting the film among the worst of the year. That sort of buzz is sure to hurt a film before it hits theaters, but we’ve seen many, many movies rebound from critical ravaging this year (“Venom” being the big one). However, it appears that the critics were on the money with ‘Marwen,’ as the opening weekend crowd gave the film a disappointing B- CinemaScore, indicating that word-of-mouth is going to be non-existent.

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So what you’re left with, at the end of the day, is a mildly expensive film, with high profile talent and fairly large advertising spend, that is going to lose tens of millions of dollars and go down as one of the bigger busts of 2018.

Hopefully, if ‘Marwen’ does anything, it sheds like on Hogancamp’s story and the good documentary that you can watch now.