Universal Pictures opened the film adaptation of the musical “Dear Evan Hansen” in the United States this weekend and it debuted to just a $7.5 million opening three-day haul – below already meagre $10 million early projections.
That soft start came as little surprise following the movie being torn apart by critics over the past week, scoring a dismal 34% (4.9/10) on Rotten Tomatoes. In the wake of this opening, the question is being asked as to whether the film should have gone straight to streaming or, at the very least, day-and-date.
Considering NBCUniversal is pushing “Halloween Kills” simultaneously in cinemas and on Peacock, a movie already showing up in early tracking for a $45-50 million box-office opening, it’s a fair question.
With a relatively low budget of $28 million, ‘Evan’ won’t be a major loss for Universal which hurt much more from the even worse reviewed and around four times more costly “Cats” in late 2019.
Yet this underperformance, combined with the disappointing box-office earlier this Summer of “In the Heights” (which had stellar reviews), suggests musicals are becoming potentialy too risky a genre for the big screen alone.
‘Evan’ also scored an A- CinemaScore, indicating audiences are much more forgiving than the critics of both the film’s approach to its subject matter, and the controversial casting of 27-year-old Ben Platt as a teenager.
In addition thanks to Universal’s agreement with movie theater chains, the movie can try and make its money back via PVOD where it will premiere on October 14th. Still, the question is being asked as to whether Universal could have made more had they sold the movie off to a major streamer.
Source: Deadline
