It added just $1,850,909 and continued to struggle, despite the accolades and looks to flame out with a disappointing $47M - turning this into yet another mid-budget adult picture that was ignored upon release by its target demo. Vice was expected to see a surge in business the weekend after the nominations (Jan 25), but its play was mostly tapped out. The movie managed to stay alive in the marketplace until the Oscar nominations were announced and it had pulled in about $40M when it landed 8 nominations including Best Picture. Auds gave the movie a toxic C+ Cinemascore but Vice held on during its second frame, dipping 26.2% to $5,734,509. Vice opened with a so-so $7,768,371 and a 6-day holiday frame total of $17,674,487 - placing #6 at the box office which was led by Aquaman. Annapurna also strongly backed the picture with a strong marketing and awards campaign that was estimated in the $35M – $40M range. Reviews were lukewarm, which was expected with material like this - though both the very positive and extremely negative reviews came from all sides of the political spectrum. The only other opener on Christmas Day was the turkey Holmes and Watson. The trainwreck Welcome to Marwen also opened on the 21st, as did Second Act. Vice opened on the 25th and the big budget tentpole competition got a head start on the 21st: Aquaman, Mary Poppins Returns and Bumblebee. If given a more responsible sub-$40M budget, Vice would have likely recouped its expenses. It was unlikely a vicious comedy about a bureaucratic ghoul would reach blockbuster box office numbers, but Vice simply cost too much money to realistically ever break even. Adding to its lack of broad appeal was the subject of the movie himself, as Cheney was not so much a divisive figure as a hated one. Christian Bale had been unreliable at the box office and as mainstream cinema had become more corporate and toothless, politicised adult fare like this had been relegated to mostly TV/streaming or arthouse/VOD releases. They landed a very minor money maker, ironically on the acclaimed anti-capitalist satire Sorry to Bother You, but then botched the release of The Sisters Brothers.Īnnapurna had much riding on Vice, but even with strong award buzz surrounding the movie, its commercial prospects were limited. Their first movie as a fully functional distributor was the commercial disaster Detroit and that followed with two under the radar movies Brad’s Status and Professor Marston & The Wonder Women. Annapurna had hemorrhaged tens of millions in capital from a series of flops. Shortly before the release, the fledgling distributor had numerous shake ups in their executive ranks and in October Annapurna dropped two projects about to enter production - Jay Roach’s untitled Roger Ailes movie and the Jennifer Lopez starrer Hustlers, which led to wide speculation that there was a serious cash-flow problem at the company. Most award type pictures usually premiere early during the fall festival rounds to build hype, but McKay was still tinkering with the edit into the fall and Vice skipped the festival circuit. Vice was positioned as a major awards player and dated for the Christmas frame. The budget for Vice was $60 million, which was financed by Annapurna and international pre-sales to distributors covered the majority of the production expenses. Vice and If Beale Street Could Talk were the first two projects to emerge from the new arrangement. In May 2017, Plan B landed a three year deal at Annapurna, with the mini-major committing to release three of their movies per year. Brad Pitt’s Plan B produced and packaged the picture at Paramount, which had also handled the release for The Big Short, but the studio put Vice into turnaround after concerns about the large budget. It was announced in November 2016 that Adam McKay would helm Vice as his follow up project to his 2015 critical and commercial hit The Big Short. Cast: Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Steve Carell, Sam Rockwell.
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