The numbers for weekend movie sales are in, and Al Gore’s new movie, a sequel to An Inconvenient Truth, called An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power (AIT2) tanked at the box office this weekend according to numbers gathered by movie sites “Box Office Mojo” and IMDB.
The opening weekend for any new movie is usually when the public, rife with anticipation, lines up to buy tickets at theaters. In this case, the opening weekend seemed to signal a major lack of interest on the part of the public, but more importantly, lack of interest in promoting the film by the studio itself, Paramount, who limited the opening weekend to just 4 theaters nationwide.
According to Box Office Mojo, AIT2 opened in just 4 theaters, and earned a measly $124,823.00 and put it at number 28, well behind other movies opening that weekend:
This is quite a departure from how the film was received at the preview at the Sundance Film Festival back on January 19th. According to Variety:
“An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power” kicked off the 2017 Sundance Film FestivalThursday night, bringing a strongly positive response from an audience of 1,200 at the Eccles Center Theater.Though Al Gore announced in “An Inconvenient Sequel” that he is a recovered politician, the audience at the Sundance Film Festival reacted to the follow-up to 2006’s “Inconvenient Truth” like they wish he would get back in the game.Many stood at the end of the film to applaud Gore, who compared the cause of slowing climate change to other great moral causes of the modern era — like women’s suffrage and civil rights.
…
Reminiscent of the original, “An Inconvenient Sequel” depicted dire consequences of a warming earth — from flooding in Miami and the Philippines, to the worst drought on record in Syria, bringing human suffering there that predated the ongoing civil war, to air pollution so bad in some parts of China that life expectancy has declined by six years.
The now 68-year-old Gore acknowledges that he “would be lying” if he didn’t admit slow progress on slowing greenhouses gases sometimes causes him despair. “In order to fix the climate crisis we have to fix the democracy crisis,” he declares.After receiving his standing ovation following the premiere, Gore told the crowd that despite repeated setbacks there is reason to have hope for progress on climate change.
In essence, Gore is admitting that there’s not a lot of interest for action on his cause. Could it be because the majority of people just don’t believe him?
I’m not sure Mr. Gore will recover any momentum like he had with the original AIT film in 2006. In my opinion he’s become largely irrelevant in the climate debate, mainly due to the multitude of failed claims and factual errors in his statements overs the years. For example, it was shown that in a Gore-produced “high school science experiment” film about carbon dioxide, that the results demonstrating warming had to be faked in post production to make the experiment work. We caught and called him out on it, and yet the video remains on his website today, years later.
If Gore really speaks “Truth to Power” you’d think he’d want to remove that video, especially when a rival has clearly shown his “high school science experiment” results to be entirely fabricated. Apparently, the man has no scruples.
In AIT2, there’s similar failures and fabrications, as Bjorn Lomborg points out in a Wall Street Journal article
The former vice president has a poor record. Over the past 11 years Mr. Gore has suggested that global warming had caused an increase in tornadoes, that Mount Kilimanjaro’s glacier would disappear by 2016, and that the Arctic summers could be ice-free as soon as 2014. These predictions and claims all proved wrong.
“An Inconvenient Truth” promoted the frightening narrative that higher temperatures mean more extreme weather, especially hurricanes. The movie poster showed a hurricane emerging from a smokestack. Mr. Gore appears to double down on this by declaring in the new film’s trailer: “Storms get stronger and more destructive. Watch the water splash off the city. This is global warming.”
This is misleading. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—in its Fifth Assessment Report, published in 2013—found “low confidence” of increased hurricane activity to date because of global warming. Storms are causing more damage, but primarily because more wealthy people choose to live on the coast, not because of rising temperatures.
In the trailer, Mr. Gore addresses “the most criticized scene” of his previous documentary, which suggested that “the combination of sea-level rise and storm surge would flood the 9/11 Memorial site.” Then viewers are shown footage of Manhattan taking on water in 2012 after superstorm Sandy, apparently vindicating Mr. Gore’s claims. Never mind that what he actually predicted was flooding caused by melting ice in Greenland.
Mr. Gore declares in his new film that “it is right to save humanity.” No argument here. But is using scare tactics really the best way to go about it?
Gore is clearly mostly about propaganda, and both sides of the climate debate now recognize this. One wonders if Mr. Gore isn’t past his expiration date when it comes to climate.
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Maybe it would do better if they hyped it as a Fairy Tale.
Or perhaps it would be #1 in the “Sci-fi Comedy Mocumentary” category.
He failed to put in the flying sharks,everyone knows you need flying sharks to make modern disaster movies work.
Maybe Al needs to find something else to scare all of us about. Perhaps a documentary about how he plans to run for president again would prove sufficiently terrifying to get him a nomination for best horror film.
Sadly the viewership will skyrocket once the film is released to “Science” teachers in K – 12 indoctrination centers worldwide….
He’s a joke; he can’t reach an audience beyond the age of 18, with the exception of Sundance goers!
Exactly, I expect my local high school will be showing it to their students this fall. How much Gore earns in royalties is unknown.
The amount of “interest” generated by this movie is roughly equivalent to that of late-night infomercials for home elliptical machines. And appeals to the same crowd.
Makes me want to drive 1000 miles to the nearest theater showing his flick. I wonder if I’ll be lucky enough to get a seat. Perhaps I should bring a tape recorder and record those pearls of wisdom that he has undoubtedly accumulated over the years. A very modest man. So gracious.
I’ll have to go see it and heckle all the misinformation until they throw me out …
I doubt that you’d bother the three people in the audience.
Rhoda,
I live in the SF Bay area. I might actually get thrown in jail or even lynched …
I was planning to see it, but then I decided I needed to wash my hair instead….
Rhoda: the takings per theatre are 30 grand, so it doesn’t look like the showings were empty. Maybe they chose green heartlands for the location of the theatres?
Sorry, Anthony. but $31k per theater is really good. Dunkirk pulled in $7k per theater. Of course, the locations of the theaters were probably optimized. You can’t tell if it is a flop until it is put in wider release.
You have a point, but that’s likely all acolytes, and few if any general public. Morano has the same issue with his film, but as my previous story shows, he gets no media help in promoting it. My point is why did the studio limit it to four theaters? If this is really a “crisis”, you’d think they’d want to get behind that with immediate wide release.
” you’d think they’d want to get behind that with immediate wide release.”
Nah. They’re money whores, plain and simple. They know it’ll tank in wide release, and they’re smart (financial) people. They may or may not believe Gore’s BS, but they maximized the potential profit (or minimized the loss), and it’ll soon disappear.
Al Gore is a political mercenary and propaganda is his weapon.
mer·ce·nar·y
ˈmərsəˌnerē/Submit
adjective derogatory
1.
(of a person or their behavior) primarily concerned with making money at the expense of ethics.
P.S. The nationwide release of the film happens this week, and then we will know whether it’s a flop or not. Regardless, it will probably be aired on Al Jazeera and HBO hundreds of times over the next few years.
What’s everyone’s take on Gore’s “democracy crisis” claim? Is he proclaiming his anointment to the rightful king of Earth?
Indy films often do limited releases to build up hype (full theaters!) until they get a distribution deal. Actual release date is 4 August!
If Gore’s film had been put into as many theatres as Dunkirk (instead of just four) what would have been the average take then?
I suspect there were a lot of acolytes who drove an hour or two just to see this “movie”.
If it had been in more theaters, I doubt the total take would have increased all that much.
Right, Todd. Release in four theatres is strictly a trial flight, and probably a successful one. The decision to limit this initial release to these four outlets may have been based on previews elsewhere, but ranking this flick based on one weekend’s gross is misleading. The average gross per outlet is the proper metric for market performance.
“An Incontinent Sequel” is not scheduled to make credulous audiences pee their pants nationwide until August 3. So far, it looks favorable…for those who like propaganda. I suspect theatergoers can get KoolAid to wash down their popcorn.
Releasing this well-publicized film in only 4 theatres is an attempt to gin the per theatre stats to create a buzz. Naomi Oreske’s “Merchants of Doubt” (2015) had gross domestic sales of only $308,156 while Naomi Klein’s “This Changes Everything” had gross domestic sales of $16,692. Public interest in these eco-catastrophe propaganda films is waning.
Al Gore – the climate whore. Making his millions on no more than a lie. Repeat the lie enough, it’s swallowed whole as the truth.
In my case, if you repeat the lie, I get tired of hearing it.
Look, I think it’s full of lies, too. But look at the return per theater.
Hardly looks like it bombed out.. looks to me like it’s going into wider release. How can you miss that?
IOW, ditto Todd.
Heh… what I get for walking away for a bit.
I think the average movie theatre price is a little over $17…..so only around 7000 people saw it
Actually, earning almost $125,000 and coming in at 28th in just 4 theaters is pretty impressive. Al must have bought all the tickets himself. lol!!
Al got, by far, the highest average per theater take at $31,206/theater. #1 ranked Dunkirk only averaged $7,100/theater over the weekend.
Last weekend was a limited release. It’ll be interesting to see the numbers next week with a wider release.
I wouldn’t put it past Gore to ahve bought up all the tickets. $125k is hardly going to break him.
I’d bet Dunkirk did better than that it a lot more theaters.
It’s a sign of the times. Dunkirk was about something real.
May this joke movie have as much success as his plan to tax every single URLconnection,just like a long distance phone call, that’s his Internet…..
“Science Fiction”…Didnt see it and wont but good $’s for the 4 theaters shown in…..
Ranking is a 5/10 and you can see there are the believers and the skeptics
1127 IMDb users have given a weighted average vote of 5.0 / 10
Demographic breakdowns are shown below.
Votes Percentage Rating
433 38.4% 10
47 4.2% 9
43 3.8% 8
28 2.5% 7
23 2.0% 6
13 1.2% 5
11 1.0% 4
19 1.7% 3
25 2.2% 2
485 43.0% 1
Arithmetic mean = 5.4. Median = 6
Mr. Gore is clearly about Mr. Gore. Both films are an ego trip for him. Most scenes involve Albet Jr. front & center. See Mr. Gore save the Paris Accord! Give me a GD break.
Sorry, Albert Jr,
What’s the title of his next film? Isn’t he over-using the word “inconvenient”? It may be convenient for him to keep using inconvenient, but it’s starting to get on my nerves. How about “Son of Inconvenient” or “The Return of the Inconvenient”. They sort of have a nice ring to them, don’t you think? How about a WUWT contest to name the sequel ti the sequel? Just a thought.
The -gate suffix has been way more overused. Calm down.
Incontinent. There fixed it for ya.
The Second Coming of the Inconvenient Truth. Oh wait, The third Coming…
“What’s the title of his next film?”
“Several-Million-mile Journey to the Center of the Earth!!!”
I sometimes wonder if this man actually believes his own hype? He doesn’t live a life-style that suggests he does. He and DiCaprio need to combine forces on the next sequel. They can show how AGW will cause ice bergs that sink giant ships and kill all the passengers, and they won’t even have to shoot any new footage.
It is interesting that one can make an industry of producing propaganda that reinforces what other want to believe and completely ignore the truth. It isn’t just governments that can “profit” through propaganda. You just need to convince Hollywood of your claim.
He’s Hansen’s yorkie.
Why, pray tell, did something so hyped open in only four theaters? Perhaps the distributors were trying to limit their losses.
Paramount is just a distributor, no money into production
It seems we are overlooking that Gore charged Leonardo 120k for his ticket 😉
You gotta be careful on how this is characterized, the per-theater metrics are very solid, but the theaters are being hand picked, places like Cupertino, West Hollywood, Upper West Side .. and there’s a slow-roll, limited run in each theater, give it a month before it’s really called a total dog.
Paramount is actually pushing on-line viewing, and getting some traction, although it’s below the thresholds where day-to-day streaming metrics are stable.
One thing about this movie, the production values are really bad. Looks a lot like people in Hollywood donated time, but there was no good effort to build a coherent look and feel, and style is the thing that draws in the youngsters …
“…the theaters are being hand picked, places like Cupertino, West Hollywood, Upper West Side”
I predict low sales in Bismarck
Interesting they rolled out the hottest week of summer
As they used to say: “If it’ll play in Peoria it’ll play anywhere”. Once it makes, if it makes, wide distribution I doubt it will do well in any of what the Leftist call “Fly Over” states.
That rather odd island of committed Leftists that have two brain cells to rub together, the Village Voice, is on to him. “…more brand building…”
That is the only purpose of the movie – build the trademarked Al Gore Climate Catastrophe Unless You Fork Over More Money brand.
I cannot hear Al speak anymore and not think of “Manbearpig”. South Park has forever tainter my view of this man.
“Half man, half bear, half pig”
Classic episode and the math inherent in above statement is more accurate than climate models
Do you really think he needed any extra taint?
I would love to know how much was expended on direct mail, social media and phone banks to reach the AGW sycophants within a 60 mile radius of those theaters. That would tell us a whole lot about just exactly what the drawing power of his latest screed will be.
I’m not an AL gore fan but the film is number one at 125 k per theater..
Sorry Al, I haven’t seen the original yet, and won’t watch the sequel until until I’ve seen that. I will watch the original AIT approximately when pigs take wing and fly, or when hell freezes over – whichever comes first.
Hell will freeze over the day Al Gore lands there! If only I could be there to see it!
Well, I’ve been told that I am going there. But I can at least tell those people that I’m going to have a cold reception, not a hot one, considering that Al is quite a bit older. (Note to self, must remember to specify parka burial, not tuxedo, in the will.)
As for promotion, the MSM as well as the distributor are going full out. I have seen numerous articles written to promote this film, including a Bill McKibben fawning interview with Gore for an airline magazine. In my local AMC theater there is a huge wall-sized poster promoting this flick. I don’t think they are holding anything back in trying to promote this, expecting great returns.
All that being said, I think Anthony’s prediction about it bombing in general release has a greater chance of coming true than any of the predictions Gore makes in his movie.
“Anthony’s prediction about it bombing in general release has a greater chance of coming true than any of the predictions Gore makes in his movie.”
Setting the bar awfully low, aren’t you, Mumbles-san?
Typical bully tactic … pretend you’re the victim and the underdog. Until The Donald was elected, the alarmists were in power.
Yes, what did he do when he was the power?
And what is he doing personally now?
Do as I say and not as I do does not cut it.
What did Gore do when in power?
His big VP initiative was to reduce government red tape.
Now, when you see on a government form, such as your tax return, that it should take 32 minutes for you to gather information and complete that government form, recognize that as Gore’s legacy.
https://govinfo.library.unt.edu/npr/library/nprrpt/annrpt/pdf/com01.pdf
Do they waste rotten tomatoes on that?
I will make sure it does, sometimes the process needs a little push
I wonder if anywhere in the movie there is measured data. Lots of words, lots of predictions, lots of video of bad weather I’m sure, but is there any measured data shown?
There is a video of Bill Nye debating a skeptic about global warming and Bill Nye said it is the rate of change of sea level rise that is alarming. The skeptic said the rate of change of sea level rise is not changing. Bill Nye closed by saying “We just don’t agree on the data at all”.
How absurd is that? They can’t agree on what the measurements are! An audience can not make any conclusions about a science issue without measured data, but most warmists never show measured data when they tell us how bad the problem is. And any mainstream media spot on global warming will never show measured data either, just words and predictions of terrible consequences.
The critics give it 77% on Rotten Tomatoes, the audience, not so much at 41%.
That is very typical for Rotten Tomatoes. Any movie with a leftist agenda will be praised to the sky by the professional critics (MSM) but often get very low ratings from the public. And for a movie with a centrist or even conservative agenda, the critics will hunt for a reason to dislike it, even if it’s a well made and effective film.
The critics vs audience gap is the promotional hype.
It opened in 4 theatres but that’s 3 more than it needed.
Only one cinema needs to show it before it goes out on download and DVD… Only one to be eligible for the Best Documentary Oscar.
This will win the Oscar and then be pushed on schoolchildren. It’s not meant for a discerning audience.
Two of the theaters offered free beer and munchies.
Morano should do his sequel to counter Gore’s disinformation campaign. He can call it ‘Fraudulent Green’.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_Green
“Fraudulent Green is people …. not being able to run their air conditioners.”