Hostel II goes Ishtar at the box office! R-rated horror in jeopardy?
0 Comments Published by Steven Friedman on Monday, June 18, 2007 at 1:36 PM.
Just a quick follow-up to this post, in which I wondered if and how a bootleg copy of a certain film (in this case Hostel: Part II) - downloadable prior to its official release - would effect the box office-revenue of said film.Well, the movie's out and the numbers are in. And alas, they are not looking good for Roth & Co. Hostel 2 opened nationwide (nation as in the United States) on june 8th and only managed to gross a rather disappointing $8,2 million in its opening weekend, landing the number 6-spot in that weekend's top-10, just below the third Shrek-installment - which was already out for a couple of weeks.
By comparison, the first Hostel grossed nearly $20 million in its opening weekend and went on to garner a grand total of about $47 million in the United States alone.
Now in my previous post, I said that if any movie were to suffer from a bootleg copy, it would probably be the Hostel-sequel. What with the target audience for that film also comprising a large chunk of the p2p-filesharing audience and all.
Has the 'Hostel 2-case' proven beyond reasonable doubt that pirate copies hurt the box office of the actual films? Of course, Eli Roth thinks it has. The director even goes as far as claiming that the end has come for R-rated horror. And while I don't think that is the case, I must admit that there most probably is a connection between online piracy and box office results of (genre) films.
Which brings us to the all-important rule for filmlovers all over the world: go to the movie theater and buy a ticket, even if you are an avid downloader.
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