Is Dracula Dead At The Box Office?
Dracula is a movie and literary monster that has been around for well over a century now, but is it time to finally put a stake in his film endeavors for good? Universal tried not once but twice to bring the Transylvanian bloodsucker to screens this year, and both times, he has disappointed at the box office (via Slash Film). It’s especially interesting because Universal isn’t even really recycling material at this point since both movies took very interesting angles on the classic character.
Two very different Universal movies, both about Dracula, are among this year’s biggest disappointments at the box office.
Universal’s first Dracula movie this year was Renfield, which ended up making a very disappointing $26.3 million worldwide at the box office. Universal’s second attempt, The Last Voyage of the Demeter, is off to a similar terrible start, only bringing in just over $6.5 million for its domestic opening. Of course, the theatrical tale for The Last Voyage of the Demeter hasn’t been written yet, but things aren’t looking good.
Renfield decided to take a more comedic angle on Dracula, with Nicholas Hoult starring as the vampire’s titular long-suffering assistant. In a frankly brilliant casting move, Nicholas Cage was brought on to play the classic movie vampire. Still, this enticing pairing and the interesting premise weren’t enough to make people turn up at the box office.
The Last Voyage of the Demeter went back to Dracula’s horror roots, adapting a chapter from Bram Stoker’s novel where the vampire stows away on the titular ship to make the journey from Transylvania to England.
A claustrophobic ship on stormy seas where a doomed crew is trapped with a terrifying monster seems like the perfect set-up for a box office horror hit. However, it looks like that isn’t going to be the case.
To The Last Voyage of the Demeter‘s credit, it would have been hard to predict that releasing this Dracula film in August would still compete with two box office juggernauts released in July.
With M3GAN and Talk to Me, horror has had a good year, yet both Dracula movies failed to earnt heir production budget at the box office.
Of course, this refers to the ‘Barbenheimer’ phenomenon, which saw people heading to theaters in droves to see both Greta Gerwig’s Barbie film and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. Both films are doing great weeks after their release, with Barbie already passing the $1 billion mark.
Along with possibly sucking up some revenue from its latest Dracula movie at the box office, Barbie will likely be nabbing the top-grossing movie of the year spot from Universal. Barbie is sitting at around $1.18 billion, while Universal’s The Super Mario Bros Movie is at $1.3 billion. One or two more weekends of ticket sales could launch Barbie to the next level, adding another accolade to Greta Gerwig’s impressive cinematic achievement.
To The Last Voyage of the Demeter‘s credit, it would have been hard to predict that releasing this Dracula film in August would still compete with two box office juggernauts released in July.
With Universal attempting to make two different takes on Dracula and coming up very short at the box office, it’s possible that we might see the studio hold back on bringing the vampire back to the big screen anytime soon. While the mixed reviews for both films didn’t help, it seems like people just aren’t too interested in vampire movies at the moment. If you’re interested in checking it out, The Last Voyage of the Demeter is now playing in theaters.
