I just watched Dredd with a buddy of mine. It absolutely BOMBED at the box office, but I was always intrigued by it after seeing all the positive critic reviews it received.
I remember the first time I saw the Dredd trailer before it came to theatres. I just thought to myself, "Man, this movie is gonna bomb." It looked horribly cheesy and B-movie...ish. BUT...
Whoever created the Dredd trailers did an AWFUL job of portraying its quality. My friend and I both really liked it! It was really well done. My friend is actually a filmmaker, while I'm just your average Joe Shmoe movie viewer; so, that's two very different opinion types that both rate Dredd positively!
It's obviously never great to see any movie bomb/lose money, but it's always worse when a movie is actually good and still does poorly. Maybe I feel too bad about things like this; but, because I liked Dredd so much, I feel obligated to spread the word to try to get people to see it in hopes of getting it a little more of the attention/popularity it deserves.
It is rated R, and is pretty violent (typically stylistically) with lots of swearing, but it's nothing that really turned my buddy or I (both 26 yrs old) off.
Anyways, one of my favorite movies of 2012. Check it out!
For anyone wondering how badly it bombed...Dredd's production budget was $50 million, which means it needed to make $100-$150 million in order to avoid losing money (general rule of thumb is that profit begins after a movie makes 2-3x its production budget). Dredd made $13 million in the US (among the lowest of any release -- especially major -- all year) and $33 million total/worldwide; so, a $67-$117 million dollar loss. My biggest thing isn't the money lost by the distributing company, but rather the fact that barely anyone saw this movie, despite it being quite good.
source: http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=dredd.htm
