Lions Gate's 'Gods Of Egypt' Becomes Year's First Flop

Last year at this time, investors had already seen three big budgeted films fail to live up their hype. Studios have fared much better this year.

The one thing Lions Gate Entertainment Corp. (USA) LGF's "Gods of Egypt" had in common with 2015's "Jupiter Ascending," "Blackhat" and "Seventh Son" was everyone saw the film's failure coming. Early tracking on all four were low and "Jupiter" had already been pushed once to help its studio avoid releasing back-to-back summer mega-flops.

Yet, Lions Gate (and those other studios) had no choice but to release it, despite all involved knowing this was going to be a brutal weekend. The movie, which cost $140 million to produce, is looking at a total that may struggle to reach $14 million. That would place the film in second place behind a dominant "Deadpool."

In its third weekend, Twenty-First Century Fox Inc FOXA's superhero pic will add another $30 million to its till and place its domestic total around $285 million. The film will hit the $300 million mark by this time next week. Globally, its haul is over $600 million as plans for a sequel continue to come together.

The one bit of good news for Lions Gate in this mess is that of that massive budget, due to Australian tax credits and foreign pre-sales the studio only is responsible $10 million. While that doesn't count the cost of its marketing/promotional campaign (which included a Super Bowl spot), it still could have been much worse for shareholders.