The new film “Serenity” bombed big at the box office last weekend and now its two stars want answers.
RELATED: Matthew McConaughey Goes Full Frontal In His New Movie But He’s Blocked It From His Memory
According to Deadline, Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway are both angry at distributor Aviron Pictures over their release and promotional strategy for the film, which ended up pulling in a tiny $4.4 million over its opening weekend.
The report says both stars had agreed with the distributor on a plan to do a full promotional campaign to match the film’s 2,500-screen wide release, including doing interviews on talk shows.
Before heading out to an interview junket, McConaughey and Hathaway learned that Aviron was not going to do any promotional spending outside of the interviews.
In their defence, Aviron put out a statement explaining that negative reviews and audience response led to their decision to not spend more on the release.
RELATED: Anne Hathaway Breaks Out A Perfect Matthew McConaughey Impression On ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live’
“We had the best intentions for ‘Serenity’. We were excited for the opportunity to release this uniquely original movie and work with such a stellar cast and talented filmmakers,” the distributor said. “As much as we love this film and still hope it finds its audience, we tested and retested the film — with audiences and critics alike — and sadly, the data demonstrated that the film was not going to be able to perform at our initial expectations, so we adjusted our budget and marketing tactics accordingly.”
The statement continued, “Regardless of the spend, it’s next to impossible for an adult-skewing drama to overcome a 23 per cent score on Rotten Tomatoes and a D+ CinemaScore. To have spent more would have been irresponsible to our capital partners and wouldn’t have made prudent business sense for an independent distributor. We have enormous respect and admiration for the talent and all the hard work they put into the film and wish the box office results were better.”
