Herethe new Robert Zemeckis (Forrest Gump, Back to the future) with Tom Hanks and Robin Wright, is unsurprisingly a huge flop. And it's very sad.
There are some stomachs that hurt more than others. Because there are Borderlands et The Crowand there are the Furious et Megalopolis. Herethe new film by the great Robert Zemeckis, is undeniably part of the second category. Whether we like it or not (it divides the team a bit, as usual), it's an ambitious work of cinemawhich is unlike anything else, and which reminds us to what extent the director of Who wants Roger Rabbit's skin?, Death suits you so well et Contact is a fascinating artist.
But since the world is sad and worthless, Here did not find its audience. Despite the reunion of a good part of the team of Forrest Gumpincluding Tom Hanks and Robin Wright in the leading roles, the adaptation of Richard McGuire's graphic novel was released to deafening silence, as if the studio absolutely didn't believe it.
The start at the box office was, unsurprisingly, catastrophic, especially since the American reviews were murderous. And despite much more positive opinions in France, Here will not be able to escape it: it will indeed be a huge failure.
HERE COMES THE BIDE
It started very badly for Here upon its American release. On more than 2,600 screens, the film opened with barely 5 million dollarsin fifth position behind Venom 3, The Wild Robot, Smile 2 et Conclaveall of which were within a few weeks of operation. It was a higher start than The Walk (1.5 million) and Welcome to Marwen (2.3 million), previous films by Robert Zemeckis which had been resounding failures, but it was the same thing.
In the second week, Here had tumbled to eighth place, with only 2 million and some. He therefore quickly disappeared from American screensand it wasn't much better in the rest of the world.
A month later, the results are disastrous. Here cashed in approximately $13 million worldwideincluding 12 million at the North American box office. Except for his very first film Crazy Day in 1978, it was one of the worst scores of my entire career by Robert Zemeckis, alongside The Big Shenanigan et Welcome to Marven (in the 13 million), and behind Holy witches (27 million, without even being released in cinemas in certain territories like France), and The Walk (61 millions).
In France, where the promotion was even more invisible, it was also a disaster with around 60,000 entries, far behind Welcome to Marwen (118 000) et The Walk (130,000). For comparison, Who wants Roger Rabbit's skin? had exceeded 5.8 million admissions in 1988, and Forrest Gump had approached 4 million in 1994.
POOR ROBERT ZEMECKIS
To measure the disaster of these 13 million at the box office, we must keep in mind that Here a cost between 45 and 50 million, excluding marketing – but given the promo, that shouldn’t change much. It is a budget similar to Welcome to Marwen (40-50 million) and The Walk (around 40-45 million), and much more modest than Pinocchio (150 million) and Allies (more than 100 million).
Here so join Robert Zemeckis' (too) long list of commercial failuresin a particularly painful way. The director's last success dates back to Flight in 2012, which grossed more than 160 million for a budget of around 30, with two Oscar nominations to boot (best actor for Denzel Washington, and best screenplay for John Gatins).
Since then, he has had a string of flops with The Walk (2015), Allies (2016) et Welcome to Marven (2018), knowing that Holy witches (2020) was not released in cinemas in many countries, and the awful Pinocchio (2022) arrived directly on Disney+. And before that, he had also had the failure of The Legend of Beowulf (2007), with less than 200 million at the box office, for an official budget of 150 million.
The time of successes like Alone in the world (430 million in theaters, for a budget of 90 million) therefore seems a long way off. Forrest Gump (1994) remains at the top since the film with six Oscars had almost reached 680 million at the box office at the time. This is 50 times more than Herewhich nevertheless has a similar budget.
It's hard to believe that after so many failures in theaters, Robert Zemeckis will still be able to obtain trust and above all budgets he wants in Hollywood. And it doesn't matter if we love Marwen, The Walk et Herethis is necessarily bad news for any cinema lover, since we are talking about one of the greatest directors still operating in the United States.
In theory, Robert Zemeckis has another project on the go: The Kinga film about Kamehameha I, the first king of Hawaii. Announced in 2018, with Dwayne Johnson in the leading role et Randall Wallace (Braveheart) as a screenwriter, the film has not been updated for a while.
