Last weekend, North American theaters welcomed the release of Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore. The film opened at only $43 million in 4,208 theaters, far lower than the $74 million and $62 million of the previous two films; plus its production cost of $200 million; In mainland China, the second largest box office market, many theaters are now closed to thank guests due to the epidemic prevention and control. The cumulative box office since its release on April 8 is less than 100 million yuan. This big production is likely to face lose money.

Fantastic Beasts: Dumbledore's Mystery stills

"Fantastic Beasts: Dumbledore's Mystery" was originally supposed to finish filming in 2019, but because the previous film's box office results were not satisfactory, Warners temporarily delayed the production process of the film. Later, it caught up with the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, and Johnny Depp, one of the leading actors of the first two films, was "cancelled" by Hollywood due to a scandal involving family affairs, and was forced to withdraw from the crew. The original author, Ms. Rowling, has also become the focus of social media because of her personal remarks, causing many controversial topics. Even, even when the film opened, Ezra Miller, one of the leading actors, was missing from the red carpet ceremony. Not long ago, he was involved in a bar brawl in Hawaii. Although he had recovered his freedom at this time, Warners decided to keep a low profile and did not let him participate in the film's audience promotion activities. All of this casts a thick shadow over the release of the film.

Fantastic Beasts: Dumbledore's Mystery has a 49% rating on Rotten Tomatoes

In short, "Fantastic Beasts: Dumbledore's Mystery", which was riddled with all kinds of negative news, as expected, suffered a waterloo at the box office. Moreover, the film's reputation is not very satisfactory. On the film review website "Rotten Tomatoes", only 49% of professional film critics have a positive rating, but fortunately, the audience rating is still 85%. According to the original plan, the "Fantastic Beasts" series will shoot a total of five films, but the North American box office of the second film has fallen to only 159 million US dollars (the first was 234 million US dollars). Unless there is a miracle happening this time, and the overall box office slump is a foregone conclusion, will Warners simply decide to stop the loss in time and stop shooting the fourth and fifth films, maybe There will be answers in the near future.
Also launching on a large scale over the weekend is Father Stu, starring Mark Wahlberg and Mel Gibson. The film was adapted from a real person and took the Gospel route. It was released in time for the Easter schedule. It was finally released in 2,705 theaters and received $5.7 million at the box office. It cannot be said to be very successful, but at least it can ensure that no will lose money.

"Father Stu" poster

The protagonist of "Father Stu", Stuart Long, was originally a heavyweight professional boxer, but he changed his mind because of a fatal traffic accident. He put aside everything in the past and changed his career to become a full-time priest. He lost the ability to walk due to a malignant disease and passed away in 2014 at the age of fifty. Stuart Long's life story is quite inspirational, very inspirational in the American Catholic community, and also makes the famous Hollywood devout Mark Wahlberg determined to bring it to the screen.
Since the project was launched in 2016, it has gone through various obstacles in the search for funds and repeated replacement of screenwriter and director candidates. It was finally made by Wahlberg at his own expense. In addition to acting as a producer, the protagonist of Stewart Lang is naturally played by Wahlberg himself. For this reason, Wahlberg, who has always loved sports and pays attention to body management, does not hesitate to temporarily interrupt all exercise activities, eat junk food every day, and gain more than 20 pounds of weight. It can be said that he has paid everything for this role.
Playing his father in the film is Mel Gibson, who is still controversial in Hollywood because of his various out-of-order words and deeds. Like Wahlberg, he is also a well-known Catholic in Hollywood. The two played father and son as early as five years ago in "Daddy's Home 2", so this time Wahlberg not only let Gibson To play his father, even the dual duties of screenwriter and director of the film were simply handed over to Gibson's lover, Rosalind Ross, who is purely a newcomer to the film.
Rosalind Rose, born in 1990, is just 32 years old this year, more than twice as young as Gibson, 66. She was originally engaged in equestrian sports, but later fell in love with literature and art, and changed her career to become a director, but before that, she only made some student short films, and she was almost an amateur in Hollywood. Judging from the film's current 41% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, the new director Rosalind Rose's directing level doesn't seem to be very reliable. However, as a niche film in the American film industry, gospel films have a specific mass base. Generally speaking, no matter how bad the filming is, there will be devout church members who will pay for it. Moreover, from marketing promotion to word-of-mouth communication, the channels of such works are very different from those of ordinary movies, so they can often achieve surprising box office results with small and large.
Therefore, although this "Father Stu" is not very popular with professional film critics, the audience polls on the first weekend have a good score of A. These audiences don't care about the aesthetics of the film or the scenography, as long as the gospel message it conveys is moving enough to make them empathize with it. From a certain point of view, in today's Hollywood where original works are increasingly difficult to obtain living space, the box office success of gospel films is indeed a different landscape.