Many people have been lamenting the demise of the decently-budgeted thriller geared towards older audiences, but when the financial results turn out to be as dire as they did for 2015’s Child 44, you can kind of understand why the major studios are so reluctant to open their checkbooks.
On a budget of $50 million, the the Cold War mystery thriller limped its way to a disastrous box office haul of just $13 million. The fact it was widely panned didn’t help, as evidenced by respective Rotten Tomatoes scores of 27 and 42 percent from critics and audiences, but the film also generated plenty of bad buzz across Europe.
Things got so heated that the Russian Ministry of Culture blocked an early screening before banning it ourtight, and the minster himself blasted the way his people had been portrayed as “physically and morally base sub-humans”, even going so far as to compare it to The Lord of the Rings and its depiction of Mordor.
Child 44 was also shelved in Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan, while its release was pushed back by six months in Georgia. That’s not a great situation for an expensive period piece starring Tom Hardy, Gary Oldman, Noomi Rapace, Joel Kinnaman, Vincent Cassell, Jason Clarke, Paddy Considine, Charles Dance, and more to find itself in, but one small mercy is that the buried bomb has been unraveling systemic corruption on the streaming charts.
As per FlixPatrol, Starz subscribers have been more than happy to discover the outcome of Hardy’s disgraced secret police agent joining forces with Oldman’s general to apprehend a serial murderer who preys on young boys, even if it puts them right in the crosshairs of the top brass who’ve been orchestrating a cover-up the whole time.
