Whether it’s in theaters or on streaming, big budget fantasy has always proven to be a risky gambit for any number of reasons, with this year’s Knights of the Zodiac wasting no time in ensuring it went down in the “bombs” column.
The live-action adaptation of Masami Kurumada’s Saint Seiya had a decent amount of hype behind it, and it wasn’t solely restricted to fans of the source material, either. The visuals looked suitably splashy, there was decent effects work, and a string of recognizable names along for the ride that included X-Men veteran Famke Janssen, one-time John Connor Nick Stahl, and everybody’s favorite martyr Sean Bean.
Unfortunately for anyone who was expecting a halfway decent adventure, though, Knights of the Zodiac took an absolute pounding. A critical approval rating of 23 percent on Rotten Tomatoes offered the consensus that it was all style and no substance, while a measly take of under $7 million at the box office underlined its credentials as an instantaneous flop.
The on-demand circuit often tends to resurrect overlooked, under-seen, and regularly terrible titles from the brink of irrelevancy, and it’s iTunes customers who’ve picked up the baton for Knights of the Zodiac. Per FlixPatrol, director Tomasz Bagiński’s criss-crossing tale of intertwined destinies, reincarnated deities, and the fate of humanity has become a Top 10 hit in the United States, so at least people have actually gotten around to watching it after it was buried and brutalized earlier this summer during its theatrical run.