10 Upcoming Movies That Could Bomb At The Box Office
3. The Meg
If The Meg does not feature Jason Statham punching a giant shark in the face, then the creative team have got this one very, very wrong indeed.
Jon Turteltaub's blockbuster would have fit in perfectly during the 1990s, where high-concept popcorn movies with absolutely ridiculous premises and even worse taglines ('Pleased To Eat You' in this case) were ten-a-penny, but such glorified B-movies are no longer the box office draw they once were.
Like many a recent Hollywood studio project, The Meg is banking on the Chinese market to bring in the big bucks as it is co-financed by Hong Kong-based Flagship Entertainment, is set off the China coast and features local stars Li Bingbing and Winston Chao among the ensemble cast. Which is just as well, as the movie will more than likely disappoint on the domestic front.
Big-budget creature features have generally struggled at the Stateside box office in recent years (with Pacific Rim: Uprising being the most recent example), and by the time The Meg hits theaters it will join an already bursting-at-the-seams marketplace that will also feature Ant-Man and the Wasp, Skyscraper, The Equalizer 2, Mission: Impossible - Fallout and Mile 22, all titles that are targeting the exact audience that the Statham vs Shark epic is after.