Whalefall Bellyflops To $7.5M

20th Century's $60M "Whalefall" opened to $7.5M this weekend, far below the $11M the tracking had spotted, while "Street Fighter" banked $31M and A24's Elizabeth Holmes doc "You Can See Everything" charted the second best documentary opening ever, per Deadline.

The math is simple, and the whale is losing. Sixty million to make. Seven and a half back. The tracking spotted $11M and the picture delivered about $3.5M less than the forecast, which is a gap big enough to park a submarine in. Deadline's box office column calls it "getting beached," which is the pun the studio's press department was too busy having heart attacks to write. Before you call it "Whalefail," the column adds, "take a silent moment to respect that this feature take of the Daniel Kraus thriller novel was shot here in California providing jobs."

The demo is the interesting number, because the demo is the same people. "Street Fighter" pulled 45% from men over 35, and Deadline is flat that this is "what's walloping Whalefall's business, the overlap in male demos." The man over 35 who will pay to watch a man get punched for two hours is, according to the same column, not the man who will pay to watch a man get digested. "Many enjoy watching Austin Abrams getting swallowed by zombies, Zach Cregger style. No one wants to watch him go through a Pinocchio experience, meaning being eaten by a whale." Same guy. Different appetite. The studio called the picture an attempt to get "sophisticated adults" in the room. The room got sophisticated in exactly one way.

The quality is not the problem, which is the part that should hurt the studio. "Whalefall" stands at 70% fresh with an 82% audience score and a B out the door, a half letter above "Street Fighter's" B-. A picture the crowd liked beat the picture the crowd loves. The whale outrated the hit, and that has happened in the history of the universe about twice, and both times the other animal was a shark.

Meanwhile, in the same weekend, a three-hour documentary about a convicted fraudster opened to $12M-$14M on 855 screens with 1,300 sellouts and a 91% definite recommend, the kind of exit score Deadline says successful Marvel movies used to post. A24 made the Holmes picture for under $10M. The studio spent $60M on a whale. The whale's heartbeat, for the record, is Josh Brolin's actual pulse, per Variety. The audience paid to hear a dead dad's heartbeat, and they still left.

The title refers to a real phenomenon, the carcass of a whale sinking to the seafloor and feeding an ecosystem for years. It is the only ecosystem this picture is feeding.

YOUR TURN: When did the crowd ever love a whale more than a fight?