As highly-regarded and influential as he is as a true icon of popular culture, it would appear as though coming highly recommended by Stephen King isn’t enough to convince paying customers to take a trip down to their local theater in order to catch it on the big screen.
It’s only been 24 hours since the inimitable scribe of countless classics threw his backing behind The Lesson, a widely-acclaimed thriller that no doubt spoke to him at least in part due to its setting in the literary world. Unfortunately, the public have decided to vote with their wallets, and the overwhelming consensus is that they’ve been kept firmly closed.
While director Alice Troughton’s mystery only played on 268 theaters in its opening weekend, a cumulative haul at the box office of just $157,000 equates to roughly $588 per venue, which isn’t exactly a stellar return for such a well-received genre film that comes bearing the Stephen King seal of approval.
Of course, trying to figure out what’s going to catch on among crowds is getting more difficult by the week when titles like Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and The Flash have been bombing left, right, and center, despite both of them being mass-marketed sequels to established billion-dollar brands.
At the end of the day, The Lesson will have to make do with a meager debut, but coming so highly recommended by King should ensure that his millions of followers will at least make a point of watching it on digital and VOD.