10 Awesome 2021 Films That Didn't Deserve To Flop
2. The Last Duel
Surely the most high-profile box office dud of the year has been Ridley Scott's The Last Duel.
The $100 million historical epic certainly had a lot of appeal on paper, given its all-star cast, excellent production values, and the clout of being helmed by one of the world's greatest filmmakers.
Despite scoring strong reviews and inviting plenty of awards buzz, the film opened far below expectations, giving Scott the worst opening weekend of his entire career ahead of a tragic $29.3 million worldwide gross.
Ultimately the reasons for the film's commercial failure are myriad - most obviously, the older viewers the film was mostly geared towards are still staying away from cinemas and simply waited until the film hit streaming.
Beyond that, it was released in an extremely cluttered period for the box office - facing off against No Time to Die, Halloween Kills, and Dune - and many were likely disuaded by its sensitive subject matter, which is hardly the sort of glossy event likely to bring the popcorn-gobblers back to the cinema.
It's a crying shame for what's one of the year's most well-crafted and impressively acted big-budget movies, though Scott's assertion that attention-deficient milennials are to blame for its failure is ultimately totally ridiculous.
Don't be surprised if it's a good while before Hollywood rolls the dice on another serious, big-budget medieval epic.