Sean Penn’s new movie, Flag Day, in which he stars (with his daughter) and directs, is now a bona fide flop:
Sean Penn’s Flag Day raised a $1,656 per screen average from 24 runs this weekend, a glum opening for the father-daughter family drama from United Artists Releasing.
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The film grossed $10,853 on Friday, $18,002 Saturday and an estimated $11,895 on Sunday in ten markets (NY, LA, San Francisco, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Minneapolis, Phoenix and San Diego). It has a 88% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, but with only 50 ratings.
Let me tell you right now, that miserable $1,656 per-screen average doesn’t have a damned thing to do with the coronavirus.
The sycophants at Deadline are trying to blame the China Flu, but plenty of people of all ages and political stripes are still going to the movies. They just don’t want to see this one, which is apparently so bad, only 41 percent of critics, most of whom are also sycophants, gave it a passing grade.
Dylan Penn and Sean Penn in “Flag Day.” (MGM)
Deadline also fails to point out that Sean Penn’s previous directorial effort, 2016’s The Last Face, tanked all on its own without the help of the pandemic with a disastrous $1.16 million global take, and that was with two big stars — Charlize Theron and Javier Bardem — on the poster.
In fact, Penn hasn’t even starred in a movie that wasn’t a box office embarrassment since 2008’s Milk.
Fair Game (2010) grossed just $24 million globally on a $22 million budget.
This Must Be the Place (2011) grossed just $11 million globally on a $28 million budget.
The Gunman (2015) grossed just $24 million globally on a $40 million budget.
The Professor and the Madman (2019) grossed just $6.2 million globally on a $25 million budget.
Sean Penn in “Milk” (Universal Studios)
Penn’s problem is that after making so many dreadful movies to push his leftist politics, he’s lost the trust of his audience.
His early directorial efforts were really something special — The Indian Runner (1991), The Crossing Guard (1995), and most especially The Pledge (2001). Back then, when he was working with the colors of theme and character, Penn was a top-shelf talent. His stories unfolded like classic novels with complicated characters and human tragedy, all driven by his humanism and serious ideas. Today, he’s an exhausting and pedantic polemicist.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez (R) greets US actor Sean Penn after a meeting in Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas on March 5, 2011. Penn, who was visiting Caracas, thanked Chavez for the funding that his government gave to an NGO based in Haiti that assists the victims of the earthquake that shook the country in January 2010. (JUAN BARRETO/AFP via Getty Images)
CORE chairperson Sean Penn visits a coronavirus vaccination site at Lincoln Park on December 30, 2020 in Los Angeles, California. Los Angeles will use three existing testing sites as vaccination centers for healthcare workers. (Frazer Harrison/Getty Images)
Penn’s always been an insufferable boor as a human being. Now he’s an insufferable boor as an artist. And that’s a real shame, because, as I said, he was once something very special.
The only good news for Penn is that he most definitely did not hurt his latest flop with his obnoxious proclamations about how the unvaccinated should stay away from his movie. Even the vaccinated didn’t show up, lol.
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.
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