Palin Movie Tanks In Its Second Weekend

The new movie about Sarah Palin was supposed to jump-start her failing celebrity status and possibly propel her into the presidential campaign as a leading contender. At least that was the hope of her most rabid supporters (who have had very little to cheer about recently). But it looks like those hopes were misplaced.

As I reported several days ago, the first weekend the Palin movie, The Undefeated, was in the theaters was not really a resounding success. The movie was only released to 10 screens in the parts of the country where Palin's popularity is supposed to be the strongest. Hollywood considers a movie to be very mediocre if it averages about $10,000 per screen, and the Palin movie couldn't even do that. It averaged somewhere between $6,000 and $7,500 per screen -- even after all the internet hype Palin supporters tried to drum up.

But the figures after the second weekend make the first weekend look great. The movie showing was extended to 14 screens, but it didn't help. The movie only grossed $24,000 in its second weekend, for a per screen average of only $1,714 dollars. ( a drop of 63.2%). Ouch! That has to hurt. And those had to have been some pretty deserted theaters. It would take a dedicated right-wing Palin-supporter of a theater owner to keep losing money on this turkey day after day, when even a bad movie would bring in more money.

It looks like the makers of this bad movie know it's not going to last long in the theaters. The second weekend gross has made that pretty clear. They are rushing this turkey into other types of markets (which normally takes most movies many months to reach). ARC Entertainment has announced The Undefeated will be available for Video-on-Demand and Pay-Per-View by September 1st. Then it will be available on DVD by October 4th (including a "special edition" only available at Walmart).

I doubt this will help very much. I'm sure the die-hard Palin fans will buy some DVD's, but if the general public is not willing to go see this movie in the theater it is unlikely they'll want to shell out money to see it on television or buy the DVD. Frankly, I think Palin's 15 minutes of fame is about over. The public has peeked behind the curtain, and they don't like what they saw there.