'American Ultra' Screenwriter Ponders the Box Office on Twitter
It's hard not to sympathize with the guy. It sucks when people don't like your stuff.
Sucks when you work hard on something and put it out there only to have people give you a shrug. So it’s not hard to empathize with American Ultra screenwriter Max Landis, who took to Twitter to muse over the film’s gloomy opening weekend numbers. The reflective Twitter rant is a bit of a post-box office failure ritual at this point (see: Trank, Josh), but Landis took it a step further by just sort of being sad about the whole thing.
Landis doesn’t blame studio interference or director Nima Nourizadeh for butchering his script, but seems genuinely confused why American Ultra didn’t fare better.
Well, the reviews weren’t that great. A 46 percent on Rotten Tomatoes isn’t exactly buzz-generating. And the 6.6 over on IMDB is perfectly respectable, but an indication that at least some people who saw it just couldn’t get on board. Maybe it’s that America just isn’t into Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart as a screen duo. That said, Adventureland did similar business then subsequently gained a following.
Maybe American Ultra will be one of those films that opens weak but ends up having legs. Hell, John Carpenter pretty much spent the ‘80s doing weak box office on a run of now-revered cult films. Remember Cobra? Point is, all this Twitter hand wringing is fine, but you don’t know if this thing is a failure yet. Give it some time Max. Give America a chance.
