Did anybody really think that 47 Ronin was going to be a success? Anybody? Taking a Japanese national legend and turning it into an epic fantasy action film featuring witches, dragons and monsters starring Keanu Reeves always sounded like a strange concept for a movie, not to mention a difficult sell. Originally set for release in November 2012, a number of delays saw the movie finally hit theatres 13 months later, where it swiftly became one of the biggest box office disasters in history. The project seemed to be troubled for the start. Handing Carl Rinsch a budget of $175m for his very first feature was a huge gamble, with constant rumblings from the set that the director was struggling to manage a project of such magnitude. Rumours abounded that things had gotten so bad that Rinsch was locked out of the post-production process, although these were swiftly denied. Before release, the movie was not screened to critics and Universal went so far as to acknowledge they had taken a financial hit on the movie before it had even hit theatres, something which is virtually unheard of. When it was finally released, 47 Ronin could only make it to ninth place at the domestic box office with a debut weekend of just $9.9m, and the movie would fail to even get to $40m Stateside. Even more embarrassingly, the movie tanked in Japan where it opened in third place with $1.3m, showing the disdain audiences there had for the Hollywoodized version of the tale. Worldwide, 47 Ronin earned a little over $150m, which is roughly the same cost as the financial write-down. The sad thing is, none of this came as any surprise.
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