Politics: Sarah Palin’s “The Undefeated” loses its throne right away
- $169M the amount Harry Potter’s final film made — the biggest single weekend gross ever, BTW, but one that was very front-loaded
- $75k the amount Palin’s “The Undefeated” made this weekend in 10 theaters (roughly — see, the distributor didn’t report exact estimates)
- .04% share of Palin’s box-office take to Harry Potter’s take, which is like comparing an ant to an elephant, but still pretty fun source
- » A huge amount of spin here: ARC Entertainment threw out a press release today claiming that “The Undefeated” actually did quite well amid adversity. “We expect word-of-mouth to keep ticket sales strong and we will definitely expand the film to a wider national audience,” said Trevor Drinkwater, the distributor’s CEO. “With merely three weeks of preparation and a virtually non-existent traditional advertising spend, the film did exceptionally well.” The distributor also noted that the film did the kind of business a film would normally require millions in advertising for. Which, let’s put it simply, isn’t true. Two fairly low-budget films this weekend — Errol Morris’ “Tabloid” and the poorly-reviewed “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan” — still managed to have larger grosses than Palin’s film despite the fact that all three films showed in less than 30 theaters. And on top of that, the movie has gotten plenty of traditional media coverage in part due to its star. A dud is a dud. Sorry.