He makes $20 million a movie, won the best actor Oscar for "Gladiator" and enjoys his pick of Hollywood's choicest roles. But there's one thing that Russell Crowe can't do right now: sell movie tickets.
The actor's conspiracy thriller "State of Play" lands in theaters Friday and all indications suggest it will perform as poorly as (and possibly worse than) Crowe's previous film: last October's box-office bust "Body of Lies," which opened to $12.9 million and topped out at $39.4 million. Audience-tracking surveys show that "State of Play," which costars Ben Affleck and Rachel McAdams, will be trounced this weekend by Zac Efron's "17 Again" and may even finish behind the low-budget action film "Crank: High Voltage."
Universal Pictures, the film's producer and distributor, is hopeful "State of Play," adapted from an acclaimed 2003 British miniseries of the same name, could generate opening weekend ticket sales in excess of $10 million, with a potentially higher gross if the film's reviews, so far mostly positive, continue to run favorably. But $10-million openings are not why studios pay actors $20-million salaries, which is what Crowe received for "State of Play."
What's more, given the film's more than $60-million budget, "State of Play" will struggle to turn a profit -- its audience-tracking surveys place the film on the same box-office track as such recent duds as "The International," "The Pink Panther 2" and "Defiance."
While some of "State of Play's" likely lackluster performance will be blamed on Crowe, the 45-year-old Australian -- who is overweight and disheveled in the film's lead role as an investigative newspaper reporter -- is hardly the sole issue. Equally problematic is "State of Play's" genre: the highbrow adult drama, which is quickly becoming a big-studio relic.
Fans of sophisticated storytelling complain that hardly anyone makes smart dramas anymore, but the problem rests with the audience itself: It isn't supporting them.
Universal knows this all too well. Despite positive notices and Julia Roberts in a lead role, the studio's "Duplicity" has grossed only $37.3 million in the United States after opening March 20, and Universal's "Frost/Nixon" -- despite five Academy Award nominations, including best picture -- didn't even get to $19 million in domestic theaters.
