What happens when you take one of the modern era’s finest filmmakers, plunge them into their genre of choice that’s already yielded plenty of movies that range between very good and all-time great, then pair them up with an A-list star embedded deeply in cinema’s most successful franchise? Unfortunately, you get Blackhat.
The likes of Heat, The Insider, Collateral, and Miami Vice had more than established Michael Mann as one of the defining voices Hollywood had to offer when it came to smart and stylish crime thrillers on a blockbuster budget, so handing him $70 million and the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Chris Hemsworth in the lead role felt like a done deal on paper.
However, to say Blackhat bombed hard would be an understatement. The cyber-espionage story didn’t even crack the domestic Top 10 in its opening weekend, earning just $4.4 million to secure one of the worst debuts of all-time for any major feature to release on more than 2500 screens.
To weeks later, studio Universal removed it from all but 236 of those screens, again making history as one of the harshest removals of any third-week title regardless of budget or genre. All told, Blackhat didn’t even reach $20 million in global ticket sales, with a $90 million loss the only legacy it was able to leave behind.
That being said, iTunes subscribers are willing to shell out for the privilege of seeing the widely-panned dud, with FlixPatrol outing it as one of the platform’s most-watched features. It’s incremental, but give it a century of two, and Blackhat may yet be able to turn a profit if it carries on at this rate.