Roland Emmerich’s latest project, Moonfall, hasn’t been well-received so far, with negative reviews and becoming a box office bomb – but why did it fail so hard? Roland Emmerich has earned the title of “master of disaster” for his work in the sci-fi genre and disaster movies, and his career as a filmmaker began in 1979 with the movie Franzmann and a short-film. His first big project, Joey, arrived in 1985, and since then, Emmerich has mostly focused on sci-fi movies and disaster movies, exploring all types of natural (and so natural too) catastrophes that could end with the world as we know it.
Emmerich rose to fame in the 1990s thanks to Stargate, which he co-wrote with Dean Devlin. Stargate was a surprising box-office hit and made way for a franchise covering movies, TV shows, video games, and more. In 1996, Emmerich teamed up with Devlin again in Independence Day and Godzilla, and in 2000 he left the sci-fi world aside to direct The Patriot, one of his best-reviewed projects. Emmerich returned to tell more disaster stories in The Day After Tomorrow and 2012, and his latest project in this realm is Moonfall, starring Halle Berry, Patrick Wilson, and John Bradley.
Moonfall is set in a time where the world stands on the brink of annihilation, as a mysterious force knocks the moon from its orbit and sends it hurtling towards a collision course with Earth. With only weeks before impact, NASA executive Jo Fowler (Berry) teams up with disgraced astronaut Brian Harper (Wilson) and conspiracy theorist K.C. Houseman (Bradley) in an impossible mission into space to save humanity. Moonfall hasn’t been the success Emmerich and company most likely expected, and it has become a major box office bomb, but when looking into the story and everything around Moonfall, it’s not that surprising that it has failed.
How Much Moonfall Cost To Make & How Much It's Earned At The Box Office
Like any other sci-fi disaster movie, Moonfall was a big-budget production, so it needed to earn a lot at the box office to break even. Moonfall is actually one of the most expensive independent movies ever produced, with a budget between $138 and $146 million, including $40 million from Huayi Brothers, $15 million from Lionsgate, and $15 million from Germany. Being an independent project allowed Emmerich more creative control and a 50% share of the movie, and the movie came across various obstacles during production. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, Stanley Tucci was replaced by Michael Peña, and principal photography had to speed up, spending an additional $5.6 million. Moonfall needed such a big budget mostly due to all the visual effects needed, but unfortunately, it’s not making the necessary numbers at the box office to break even.
At the time of writing, and after its opening weekend (as Moonfall got a theaters-only release, unlike other movies that have been granted a simultaneous release on streaming), Moonfall grossed an estimated $10 million (including the numbers earned from Thursday night previews), while outside the US and Canada it grossed approximately $9.37 million during its first weekend. Moonfall is very far from breaking even at this point, and its near future doesn’t look bright.
Why Moonfall Bombed At The Box Office
The coronavirus pandemic has changed the way movies are released and how their success is measured. After many movies had to be delayed at the beginning of the pandemic, studios found other ways to get them to the audience, releasing them on streaming platforms or waiting for cinemas to open again and give them a simultaneous release on streaming or shortening the window between theatrical and streaming release – others, however, continue to stick to a theatrical release only. Moonfall was originally scheduled for an October 2021 release but was delayed to February 4, 2022, but its failure at the box office is not just about the movie releasing during the pandemic. By now, studios are aware that releasing movies in theaters only won’t bring the box office numbers they expect, but even after adjusting those numbers, Moonfall is still a major box office bomb with just $10 million against a budget of over $130 million.
Some important factors that led to Moonfall bombing at the box office are the marketing for the movie, the bad reviews, and of course, the story itself. According to reports, Lionsgate spent approximately $35 million in promotions and advertisements, including $12.2 million on TV ads, but according to monitors like RelishMix, online reactions to Moonfall were “mixed to negative” and “awareness stats ran under norms”. Social media users questioned the movie’s use of the Space Shuttle (which has been out of commission since 2011), accused Emmerich of “hating Earth”, and even after the studio released the opening sequence in December, traction ran thin. At the time of writing, Moonfall has a 39% score on Rotten Tomatoes, and even with Emmerich’s name in it, there’s little to suggest that Moonfall was a must-see at cinemas, all this contributing to its failure.
Moonfall Continues A Box Office Trend For Roland Emmerich
Moonfall isn’t the first box office bomb in Rolan Emmerich’s career, especially in recent years. The last of his projects to be box office hits (though not critical ones) were 10,000 BC, an action-adventure movie starring Steven Strait and Camilla Belle, and the disaster movie 2012 (which was all about the belief that the world was going to end in December 2012), but after that, Emmerich’s career has been plagued by box office failures. The 2011 period drama Anonymous was a box office flop and was followed by disappointing box office numbers (to varying degrees) from the 2013 action thriller White House Down, the coming-of-age drama Stonewall, Independence Day: Resurgence, and the war movie Midway. Most of these also had big budgets, with Midway being one of the most expensive independent movies of all time, and they have contributed to a box office trend for Roland Emmerich that doesn’t seem to be affecting his career much.
Even with all those movies underperforming at the box office, Emmerich continues getting the money for these big projects. The reason might be as simple as producers focusing more on what Emmerich can bring based on his biggest successes, even if the audience has grown tired of disaster movies and, in Moonfall’s case, stories about disasters and adventures in space, which have been overused by now, and it’s hard to make an engaging and somewhat believable movie set in space. It’s unlikely Moonfall will have a miraculous recovery at the box office, and whether it finds an audience in the world of streaming or not remains to be seen.