This poor movie is cursed. Blake Lively's The Rhythm Section went through so much just to make it to screens, I feel bad kicking it while it's down. But it's down, all right. It was down from most critics and viewers, and now the opening weekend box office.
Box Office Pro's longterm forecast initially expected an opening for The Rhythm Section anywhere from $10M-$15M. That was adjusted last week to around $5 million, per Box Office Mojo. But the movie didn't even manage to make that much.
Instead, The Rhythm Section just barely made the top 10 of the domestic box office chart for January 31-February 2, 2020 with $2.8 million from 3,049 screens, giving it a truly sad per-screen-average of just $918.
According to Deadline, with that $2.8 million, The Rhythm Section now has the record for the worst opening for a movie that opened on more than 3,000 screens. That means 2006's Hoot can now breathe a sigh of relief with its $3.4 million.
That $2.8 million also marks a personal low for Blake Lively, with her worst wide opening ever, dropping from the $9.8 million in 2005 for The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. But hey, even Keanu Reeves had the worst opening of his career last year and still went on to completely own 2019. Lively should be OK.
But what a disappointment!
The Rhythm Section reportedly had a production budget of $50 million, so at least it's not going to see a loss like Dolittle or Cats. Deadline pegged the potential studio losses around $30M-$40M.
Blake Lively's stunt injury during production ended up delaying the shoot much longer than anyone anticipated when her first surgery didn't go as planned. Surprisingly or not, that didn't raise the production costs because insurance reportedly covered the gap. Not that that would help Lively feel much better. She hurt her hand in a fight with co-star Jude Law and explained to CinemaBlend how her shattered hand ended up in the movie.
The Rhythm Section moved release dates a couple of times. It was meant to come out around this time last year and then was moved to November 2019. Deadline was told that the film's final move to the end of January 31 was for Blake Lively to be able to promote the film after giving birth to her third child in 2019.
Reviews for The Rhythm Section haven't been great at all, but CinemaBlend’s own Mike Reyes was a fan of the movie and gave it 3.5 out of 5 stars. Blake Lively got strong reviews for her performance. Unfortunately, the viewers who did go see the movie rated it low with 43% on RT, a 5.5/10 rating so far on IMDb, and a C+ CinemaScore.
Still, even with all of the problems and rescheduling and releasing the movie at the end of January, I am still surprised that more fans didn't turn out for The Rhythm Section. After all, Blake Lively has been teasing fans about her movie transformation for a long time now, and people seemed really intrigued (if also confused about when she was wearing character makeup).
Have you seen The Rhythm Section yet? If so, what did you think? If not, do you plan to see it at some point -- in the theater or when it's available at home on Netflix or elsewhere?
