10 Recent Movies That Were Sent Out To Die
These movies just didn't stand a chance.
It's generally expected that most movies will at least be given a chance to find their audience, because why would anyone invest a film only to end up dumping it with just the most minimal of marketing campaigns?
Yet it's also clear that sometimes a distributor can't see a path forward for a movie, and so decides to cut their losses by scaling back the promotion and doing only the bare minimum contractually obligated theatrical release.
And that's absolutely what happened with each of these 10 recent movies, all of which you could plausibly say were sent out to die by those in charge.
Now, this isn't so much a comment on their quality because, after all, some of these films were actually quite good - perhaps even skirting close to greatness.
But they were also tough to market due to either the nature of their premise, shifting trends in the market, or the problematic nature of their lead actor.
And so, these films all came and went in a mere blink, quickly shuffling into cinemas and then vanishing as if they were barely there at all, before inevitably joining the ever-growing pile of content ephemera on streaming...
10. Elio
Once upon a time, Pixar was basically bulletproof at the box office, yet their most recent release Elio suffered their worst opening weekend in history.
And with barely $130 million grossed against a $200 million budget, it's far and away their worst non-pandemic box office performance ever.
Granted, it was hardly a surprise - though Disney absolutely did market the film, nothing in the trailers made this look like anything but a totally middle-of-the-road animated film, the sort which it'd be incredibly easy for cash-strapped families to wait for on Disney+.
But Disney has also become ever more IP-dependent in recent years, and their interest in original projects - even completed ones - is firmly on the decline, so they clearly didn't give Elio the full heft of their promotional might.
Even with good reviews and a solid "A" CinemaScore, Disney failed to convince audiences to head out to see Elio, with family crowds seemingly opting to watch the remakes of Lilo and Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon instead.