The Last Voyage of the Demeter may be a Dracula film, but it looks like the famous bloodsucker isn’t popular enough to stand up to the likes of Barbie and Oppenheimer. According to Variety, the Universal film opened to a $750,000 Thursday and is looking at an abysmal $7 to $9 million opening weekend. This wouldn’t be bad for a low-budget indie horror but is certainly lacking for a $45 million production.
The Last Voyage of the Demeter earned $750,000 during Thursday previews, and is currently on pace to open with under $9 million at the box office.
The Last Voyage of the Demeter is based on a chapter of Bram Stoker’s Dracula novel, which sees the infamous vampire stowing away on the titular ship to make the trip from Transylvania to England. Of course, Dracula needs to sustain himself on the voyage, and the unsuspecting crew makes for the perfect victims. It’s a classic, tense horror movie setup set on the claustrophobic setting of a ship.
It likely doesn’t help that The Last Voyage of the Demeter is getting fairly mixed reviews. Perhaps it could see a pick up in box office numbers in the coming weeks as the Barbie and Oppenheimer numbers slowly dwindle. Both films have been in theaters for weeks now, but the hype is real, and they’re still putting up fairly strong numbers.
Horror films are historically profitable at the box office, but The Last Voyage of the Demeter has a significantly higher budget, $45 million, making it an uphill battle to be a success.
Greta Gerwig’s Barbie continues to break records on a regular basis, with the film approaching the $500 domestic million box office mark with over $1 billion worldwide. Meanwhile, Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer is approaching the $250 million mark domestically and isn’t far from crossing the $600 million worldwide mark. The incredible reviews and organic ‘Barbenheimer’ marketing for these films will likely continue to cause problems for The Last Voyage of the Demeter.
While The Last Voyage of the Demeter was the only new wide-release film this weekend, it will run into more competition in its second week of release other than Barbie and Oppenheimer. The weekend of August 18 will see the release of the DC film Blue Beetle, which could certainly eat into the audience of the vampire flick. The Jason Statham-led film The Meg 2: The Trench also hit theaters last weekend and was able to bring in a solid opening weekend.
The Last Voyage of the Demeter needed its opening weekend to be a hit since it had no competition this weekend.
At the moment, Blue Beetle is projecting a $30 million opening. The Angel Manuel Soto-directed film stars Xolo Mariduena as the Latino superhero Jamie Reyes, and it seems like the film could get an additional box office push from Latino and Hispanic audiences. This is good news for Blue Beetle, but The Last Voyage of the Demeter will likely not bring in too much next weekend.
The Last Voyage of the Demeter needed its opening weekend to be a hit since it had no competition this weekend. However, it would have been hard to predict how massive the Barbenheimer phenomenon would be. Otherwise, Universal probably would have picked a different release date.
The Last Voyage of the Demeter stars Corey Hawkins, Aisling Franciosi, Liam Cunningham, David Dastmalchian, and noted monster actor Javier Botet as Dracula. The film is directed by Andre Ovredal with a script by Bragi F. Schut and Zak Olkewicz based on Bram Stoker’s novel. You can catch it in theaters now.
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