Up until yesterday, it didn’t matter how many A-list names or Academy Award winners came attached to the project, virtually every movie aimed at older audiences to hit theaters since March of last year had flopped at the box office.
Denzel Washington, Clint Eastwood and Will Smith couldn’t save The Little Things, Cry Macho or King Richard from commercial disaster, but Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci bucked the trend in spectacular fashion this past weekend by landing the biggest opening weekend for a drama since 2019.
Right at the opposite end of the spectrum, though, we have Hugh Jackman’s Reminiscence. The high concept hybrid of sci-fi, thriller, mystery and romance suffered the ignominy of scoring the worst opening weekend in history for a title that released on over 3000 screens, where it brought in a paltry $2 million.
It’s not a terrible film, and there are plenty of good ideas buried in the feature-length directorial debut of Westworld co-creator Lisa Joy, but history is always going to remember Reminiscence as one of the pandemic’s biggest casualties. However, it’s been up and down the most-watched list on HBO Max ever since it first arrived in August, with the middling blast of genre fare currently back inside the Top 10, as per FlixPatrol.
