The Dark Knight Rises may have just passed its third weekend in America, but still it clings to the top of the box office charts. This isn’t great news for Sony, who would have been hoping that its remake of Total Recall could have mustered enough interest to dislodge Christopher Nolan’s last Caped Crusader flick.
Instead, Total Recall had to settle for second position, since it made a disappointing $26 million versus Batman’s $36.4 million. While it’s fair to say that a combination of tragic events and the Olympics have seen takings in general fall sharply over those of August 2011, it’s not a great start for Len Wiseman’s sci-fi remake, which cost an estimated $150 million to produce.
To put the numbers in some sort of context, take a look at how the original Total Recall did on its first weekend back in 1990: no doubt propelled by Schwarzenegger’s superstar status, it made a little over $25.5 million in those early few days. That the new Total Recall only made around $500,000 more than that film manage to rake in 20 years ago - and that figure hasn’t been adjusted for inflation, remember - is a worrying sign.
Reviews have been rather negative so far, and some lukewarm exit polls may also mean that Total Recall will struggle to build a greater audience through word of mouth in days to come.
It’s not all doom and gloom for Total Recall, though; the movie has only been released in the US, Canada and parts of Asia, so it’s just possible that it’ll fare better internationally than it has on its home turf so far.
Total Recall opens in the UK on the 29th August.
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