Ben Affleck’s latest film you probably haven’t even heard of marks his biggest-ever box office flop

In what may be surprising news to some movie-goers, Ben Affleck’s most recently released film is not the sports drama Air, but the Robert Rodriguez-directed Hypnotic. The twisty action-thriller opened on May 12 and over the weekend pulled in a paltry $2.4 million from 2,118 theaters, making it the worst nationwide opening for any film starring Affleck or directed by Rodriguez.

Per The Hollywood Reporter, the film cost a reported $65 million to make and could lose tens of millions at the box office after already suffering setbacks before release. Originally Solstice Studios was set to market and release the film, but the young company began collapsing in 2021 after encountering pandemic-related difficulties. Without Solstice pushing the marketing, the film seemed to disappear from industry radars, at home and abroad.

The film screened as a work-in-progress at South by Southwest earlier this year and nabbed a midnight screening slot at the 2023 Cannes Film Festival as part of promotional efforts. However, Affleck himself didn’t do any press for the film, with some sources suspecting he and the filmmakers hoped the movie could ride the coattails of the recently released Air. In addition to a lack of marketing, critics have not been kind to the film. We’ve seen it ourselves, and yeah, it’s pretty bad. But its gimmicky hypnosis narrative is at least a fun idea that could provide counterprogramming to the endless slew of sequels releasing this summer.

Until this weekend, you’d have to look all the way back to Affleck’s Phantoms in 1998 to find his lowest wide opening of $3 million. Following up Phantoms, the infamous Gigli took in around $3.8 million in 2003.

Is there an upside here? Well, Batfleck is as popular as ever, and he’s set to appear (at least briefly) in the upcoming Flash movie. Plus, he’s got a Doug Liman movie about bank robbers on his slate that could be a hit. As for Rodriguez, he has a toe in the Star Wars universe now, and even seems to know secrets about where the character of Boba Fett is headed. So he’ll probably return to that extremely lucrative universe.

Above all else, Affleck and Rodriguez should take heart knowing the main reason no one saw Hypntoic is that they simply didn’t know about it. Whether that’s the fault of the pandemic or any of the film’s backers, the project is clearly at the end of a string of bad luck. May it find its fanbase on streaming.