By Despite much gnashing of teeth, The Weinstein Company went ahead with its plan to release a PG-13 cut of The King’s Speech to theaters on April 1. How did it do on its opening weekend in 1,007 theaters?
As anyone could have predicted, it didn’t do that great, partly from the edits, partly from marketing to kids who won’t want to see it, and partly because it’s nowhere close to being a new release. The film’s gross fell 23% compared to its R-rated original version, pulling in just $1,193,506, an average of $1,185 per theater. As Indiewire put it, that’s “an average on par with the 8th weekend of Adam Sandler-Jennifer Aniston romcom Just Go With It.” Yikes.
The King’s Speech has been out in the US since the end of December, so it’s understandable that results aren’t going to be that great at this point. But what these numbers show is that the language cuts made no noticeable difference at the box office. And while I have no data to back this up, I’d imagine some of the people going to see this version of the film didn’t notice the PG-13 rating on it and might have ended up annoyed at Colin Firth’s bleeped curses. Congrats, Harvey!
[Indiewire via Movieline]