James Brown was a unique talent: mercurial, scrappy, self-promoting.
“The hardest working man in show business” had a challenging Southern back story of abandonment and discrimination that cried out for a Hollywood treatment.
But “Get on Up,” a movie distributed by Universal Pictures about the late American icon and father of funk that opened Aug. 1 has performed poorly at the box office.
Despite good reviews, a remarkable performance by rising star Chadwick Boseman, who played Jackie Robinson in “42,” and a proven director in Tate Taylor of the “The Help” fame, the Brown biopic has only made $28.9 million domestic gross, according to BoxOffice.com as of late August, not quite making back its $30 million budget. It’s still in 579 U.S. theaters, down from its opening splash of 2,468 screens.
The plunge in popularity has led a Forbes reviewer to conclude that “”Get On Up’ is sadly finished domestically, as it earned just $947k on its fourth weekend.”
Timing is a problem. The film opened the same day as summer blockbuster, “Guardians of the Galaxy,” which has made $256 million in domestic gross so far out of a worldwide gross of nearly $500 million.
“”Get on Up’ was definitely hurt by the fact that ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ shattered expectations,” said Phil Contrino, chief analyst at BoxOffice.com in an email. “The music biopic came out of the gate slow and it’s very difficult to overcome a weak opening in the summer because of how intense the competition is.”
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