On very few occasions has the mixture of humor and horror worked really well at the box office. Although there are notable exceptions such as Scary Movie or What We Do in the Shadows, one only has to take a look at the most classic attempts to unite these two genres – ahem, Mars Attacks!, ahem – to realize that commercially speaking, it is usually difficult.
That’s why, despite the fact that it may look like a great film, Renfield was doomed to fail from its conception. The film about Dracula’s sidekick, played by an in-form Nicholas Hoult alongside Nicolas Cage’s vampiric Count, has not performed as well as expected in its first weekend of release.
The film has barely grossed 10 million dollars globally: 7.8 million in the United States and 2.3 million in the rest of the world. In total it has cost Universal Pictures 65 million, so everything seems to indicate that it will be a resounding failure and will hardly recover its investment.
The reasons for failure
The main flaw seems to be one of conception: although there are films and series of this style that have worked in recent years, they are still niche, and spending 65 million on a production of this style seems crazy. If, on the contrary, they had made a more humble investment as in cases like Smile, the recovery would have been easier.
Despite being adored by many, Cage no longer fills theaters as he once did. In The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, in which he played himself alongside other actors such as Pedro Pascal and Paco León, it barely grossed 28.4 million out of an investment of 30 million.
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