Box Office Analysis: What Went Wrong With Sin City 2?

Box office disappointments are a common occurrence, but a genuine box office flop? Those weren't every day events decades ago, but in this day and age, they're as rare as anything else in the film business. You can thank international box office for that; so much money can be made internationally now it's almost impossible for a film to truly lose money. But they do happen once in a blue moon, like when R.I.P.D. made an anemic $33 million in America, and only $44 million internationally for a $78 million total that didn't come close to recouping its whopping $130 million budget.

But even that one looks like an extremely profitable venture compared to this weeks mega-dud Sin City: A Dame To Kill For. This film (which doesn't have an official budget but Deadline Hollywood did mention that the cost is supposedly in the $60-70 million range) made only $6.4 million this weekend, which is only 22% of the first Sin City's opening weekend. But that was nine years ago, and without 3D prices. Adjusted for inflation, it only made 17% of it's predecessors opening. The news is just all around bad for this release, with the only good piece of news to come from it is that its anemic performance paved the way for Guardians of The Galaxy to take the top spot at the box office once again.

While nobody expected Sin City: A Dame To Kill For to knock it out of the ballpark (I was actually on the lower side when it came to projections for opening weekend when I predicted it would hit $16 million in its opening weekend), but this is just an unprecedentedly awful performance for a movie with such widespread promotion and hype. Of course, it doesn't buck the trend of films from The Weinstein Company that were sequels to movies made at Miramax (the studio where the makers of The Weinstein Company previously worked) that wound up being financial failures. The two best examples of this are Scream 4 and Spy Kids: All The Time In The World, which shares both a similar opening and a director with the Sin City sequel.

Does this say sequels in general don't work? Of course not. But it does say that more effort should be put into these efforts from a creative and marketing perspective. I haven't seen Sin City: A Dame to Kill For yet (I'm catching it tomorrow, a review should follow shortly after), but the marketing just sort of rested on its laurels, as if the mere announcement of another Sin City adventure was on the way would get tons of people in the theater. Obviously it didn't work, just like past efforts declaring the return of Ghostface and Spy Kids didn't push those movies to financial success.

It's unlikely this curbs pointless future sequels from being made; hell, I'm sure right now Adam Sandler is brainstorming other places he can fart during the course of Grown Ups 3. But going forward, the fianncial demise of Sin City: A Dame To Kill For will at least inspire more creativity when it comes to makreting and when choosing what film are deemed worthy enough of getting further adventures.