After the phenomenal small-scale success of Instructions Not Included, hopes were high for Robert Rodriguez sequel Machete Kills. Unfortunately, all that buzz didn’t translate into ticket sales.
There’s been a lot of talk recently about the power of Latinos at the box office, and certainly the success of Instructions Not Included bolstered that point of view, with its amazing per-theater numbers for the first few weeks of its release. (It’s worth noting, however, that the distributors of Instructions never pushed it into wide release–it never made it into 1,000 theaters–and consequently all that momentum faded considerably in the second half of its seven-week run; it also made almost as much in Mexico as it made in the U.S. in half the time.) What’s more, the massive box office numbers for Alfonso Cuaron’s Gravity shows that being Latino (or Spanish, at least) is no impediment to membership in The Big Leagues–though the movie has no Latino content or characters, and its stars are both non-Latino.
Unfortunately, those recent triumphs don’t seem to be extending to Machete Kills. After some truly aggressive pre-release marketing, and an opening in more than 2,500 theaters, Kills generated a very low $3.8 million–less than a third of the first-weekend numbers of the original Machete in 2010. According to industry website BoxOfficeMojo.com, that’s one of the worst openings ever for a movie in over 2,500 locations, and one of the worst openings of 2013. They project the movie will probably end its theatrical run at under $10 million, though many of Rodriguez’ movies do considerably better in VOD and DVD. Still, the presence of Michelle Rodriguez, Antonio Banderas, Sofía Vergara, Demián Bichir, Alexa Vega, and even Mel Gibson and Lady Gaga didn’t supply the necessary fuel for take-off.
All eyes forward to the Latino-heavy cast of The Counselor, with Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, Rosie Perez, John Leguizamo and Ruben Blades on October 25…
